


Great Attractors

by dimensionhoppingrose, Eva_aka_Pinkfox, Sannixx, X_Project



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Project RPG
Genre: Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimensionhoppingrose/pseuds/dimensionhoppingrose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva_aka_Pinkfox/pseuds/Eva_aka_Pinkfox, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sannixx/pseuds/Sannixx, https://archiveofourown.org/users/X_Project/pseuds/X_Project
Summary: Xorn re-creating the world has done more damage to the astral plane than people realise, until the mansion's empaths start showing signs of stress.   Meggan played by Rachel, Topaz by Sam, Haller by Tapestry, Jean by Mack, Quentin by Ben, Hope by Eva, Rachel by Jills and Fourteen (aka the Stepfords) by Chris. Plot by Tap.





	1. Yin and Yang 1

_drip . . . drip . . . drip . . ._

Had it started raining? Topaz wrinkled her nose, listening to the noise for a minute. That was okay. The rain was okay. She reached for her blanket to pull it up and fall back to sleep...

Only to be met with empty air.

That was when Topaz began to assess the situation. She was curled up in a ball - not completely out the ordinary, she often woke up like that even if she fell asleep stretched out - but she was no longer laying in her bed. If she had to hazard a guess, without opening her eyes, she would guess she was in an armchair - also not out of the ordinary, she had fallen asleep in armchairs and in the corners of couches before. But she was almost positive she had actually gone to bed that night rather than falling asleep on the couch...

She opened her eyes.

This was _not_ her room. This wasn't even Xavier's. Or at the very least if it was, it wasn't a part she had even seen. Not a part she would end up in of her own free will.

She was pretty sure this wasn't Xavier's though.

"What the _hell_...?" She murmured, pushing herself out of the chair and looking around. It looked like a library. Water was dripping from the ceiling, puddles and weak spots in the floor surrounded her. She looked down at herself - she was barefoot, wearing a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Regular sleep attire. She had definitely gone to bed, then, if she had fallen asleep on the couch she would've been wearing whatever she'd worn the day before.

"Hello?" Her voice echoed back to her, and she shivered a bit, trying to stamp down on the panic swelling in her chest. "Amanda?" That was automatic - when in trouble, call for Amanda. And she was definitely in trouble now.

And something in the back of her head whispered that Amanda couldn't save her then.

"Hello?" The panic slipped into her voice as she whipped around, breathing hitching up. Where the hell was she? What the hell was going on?! "Hello?!"

No answer. She wasn't really sure what she expected. She was very clearly alone. She swallowed hard, trying desperately to calm herself down. Panic wasn't going to do any good. Panic never helped. She needed to stay calm and figure out what she was doing. Where she was.

She closed her eyes, taking a couple of deep breaths. She was still freaked out, but she tucked that away for now. There would be time for panic later, when she'd exhausted all other options.

She opened her eyes again, looking around once more. For the first time she became aware that the area she was in seemed to be caged - like the place in a library where the most important books would go. There were podiums all around the circular area, with books chained to them. She took a step forward and then stopped as something settled in the back of her head. Now that the panic was locked down, she was starting to realize that this place, while strange and unfamiliar, was...comforting. Even if she had no idea where she was...she knew this place wouldn't hurt her. No matter how unsafe it looked.

One more sweep around the library, and Topaz's eyes landed on the book shelf in the very back of the cage. Unable to resist the natural impulse she walked over, grabbing a red-covered book and flipping it open...

_"Alice?" She called as she let herself into the house, toeing her shoes off. "I'm home."_

_Alice's car was in the driveway, but there was no answer. She frowned, dropping her bag in the armchair as she went downstairs. Maybe Alice was in the basement...but no, empty. Where was she?_

_She headed back upstairs, into the kitchen. There was her mother, on the floor-_

Topaz slammed the book shut, throwing it away from her. It hit the floor with a thud but stayed mercifully closed. Her heart was pounding in her chest, eyes wide, the beginnings of tears pricking in them. She dragged her arm across her eyes quickly and went to retrieve the book, careful not to open it as she returned it to the shelf where it belonged.

It was morbid curiosity, more than anything else, that had her reaching for another book.

_"This is home!" Alice said happily as she led them through the door. The little girl frowned, peeking around Alice's legs as she took in the living room before them. It was nice. It looked comfortable. A large hand squeezed her shoulder, and she looked up at Luca. Her father._

_This was home._

Topaz ignored the tear working slowly down her cheek as she put this book away as well. For a moment she just stared at the shelf before taking a breath and wiping her eyes once more, steeling herself.

She needed to get the hell out of here.

The cage creaked as Topaz pushed the door open, peeking out. Miles and miles of books stretched out before her. She had no idea what she was doing or where she was going.

But she started walking.

 

[_*_]

 

_drip . . . drip . . . drip . . ._

There was cold, smooth wood against his cheek and under his arms. For a moment he wondered if he'd fallen asleep at his desk, but it didn't feel like his office. The air smelled of mold and ancient glue.

Haller sat up, blinking in the dim light. He started with an inventory of his surroundings. Dark wooden table, solid chair, reading lamp in reach. Beyond that, bookshelves. Rows and rows of bookshelves.

He had no memory of this place, nor of leaving the mansion at all today. The last thing he recalled was turning in for the night in his own room and his own bed. Could he have experienced a dissociative fugue? If so that would imply that Davey had been out, and none of the alters had made an appearance since he'd returned from the astral plane. David's disorder could have progressed, of course, or perhaps another schism had occurred, but it seemed unlikely. None of the alters had ever been interested in libraries.

_drip . . . drip . . . drip . . ._

He pushed out the chair, its heavy legs grumbling against the floor. Water dripped from the ceiling to pool on the floor or glaze the reading tables. Book trolleys were overturned, and here and there ladders lay strewn like fallen branches. He seemed to be standing in the aftermath of a major storm, but the weather in New York had been clear.

A muffled shout interrupted his musings, followed immediately by a blur of colour falling at speed from a floor above his head. There was a flash of blue just before a windmilling arm hit him in the face, and the distinctively human figure dissolved into a bundle of flashing blue energy before his very eyes.

"Rachel?"

The question was rhetorical -- he recognized the girl with senses other than his eyes. Haller trotted over to the blur of light and knelt beside it, frowning.

"Ray, can you hear me?"

The ball of energy _shuddered_ in response, then darted up and circled around him a couple of times, the lightest of impressions in his head letting him know the extent of her disgruntlement at waking up in a strange place.

"I take that as a yes," Haller remarked, watching the blob flash around him. The man crossed his arms over his chest, puzzled, and glanced up. There was a small ledge above them, more of a platform for the next ladder than a proper floor. He got the distinct the impression she'd rolled off it like a sleeping cat off a dresser.

More importantly, though, he'd never seen Rachel in this state for more than a handful of seconds -- at least, not in the real world.

"Are we on the astral plane?" he asked.

An impression of a shrug was followed up with tentative agreement that read as a "'more than likely" to him. This form would take too much energy for her to achieve, much less maintain, in the real world. In the astral plane, however, her body seemed to love giving up its existence. Which was fine because it allowed her the freedom of movement to explore the dilapidated area around them with ease, darting over broken furniture and mouldy piles of paper and pausing here and there to 'poke' at one item or another. Rachel did not like the feeling of this place, and she informed David as much. It felt... rotten. Literally.

_drip . . . drip . . . drip . . ._

A droplet of water dripped _through_ and landed in a puddle beneath her. Rachel froze, another, more distinctive shudder rippling over her formless form.

Haller's wandering attention abruptly snapped back to her. "What is it?" he asked, immediately starting over. Just before he reached her the thud of his steel-toed boots against the floorboards became a splash.

Formless terror gripped him around the neck like a glacial hand. Numb tendrils crawled up his neck and into his throat and chest, and he began to shake -- a sternum-rattling shudder that clenched his muscles and shook his teeth –

A force _slammed_ into his chest, shoving him to the ground about the same time as a book cart careened off on its own accord and crashed into a bookshelf nearby. Books flew off the shelves upon impact, thudding to the ground as the library seemed to tense from the activity, as though waiting with bated breath for the next explosion of movement.

Haller opened eyes he didn't even realize he'd closed.

Rachel stared down at her adoptive brother, her verdant eyes difficult to read in shadows cast by damp hair. Her worry, it seemed, was channelled solely through the tight grip she had on his shoulders.

She was also, he noted, sitting on his chest.

"Thank you," he said, the response deceptively neutral. The sound of his own heartbeat was fading. Whatever he'd stepped in seemed to dissipate quickly, which was a relief. The sensation had been intense -- unnaturally so, even beyond his typical resistance to emotion. The experience had been unfamiliar, and unwelcome. He set it aside and remarked, "At least it got you back into one piece again."

"I don't know," the woman said, tone mirroring his as she studied her hands. "I'm not all that attached to this body."

She dissolved into a ball of energy again, only to reassemble into her physical form next to him, one hand held out to help him up even as she shook droplets of water off the other and into the deceptively innocuous puddle. Rachel snapped a shield into place above them with a click of her fingers once they were both upright. "Let's maybe avoid the water."

"Good idea." Haller took a closer look around. He could see now that the bookshelves arched into the darkness, impossibly high; the rows between them similarly endless. Dream-like, yet still more concrete than the astral plane tended towards.

"This seems too specific to be just the astral plane," he said, resting a hand on one of the bookshelves. "It reminds me more of the demonic pocket-dimension I fell into a while ago. It was patterned off a real place. Mutable, but extremely limited . . . not fully-formed like the construct made by Kwannon and Essex."

“Putting aside a discussion on your demonic activities for now, this is probably a construct more lousily-formed or created by a lousier or less trained psi,” Rachel concluded, her distaste obvious with a wrinkled nose and all. Raising a hand, she gathered a ball of power in her palm where it pooled, growing larger as she spoke. “But why pull _us_ here?”

Haller eyed her display. "Well, the demon's modus operandi was to siphon the victim's power, so you may want to be careful about showing off."

She rolled her eyes, hefting the ball a couple of times consideringly. “If that were the aim, my change in states would already have attracted them. Besides, someone’s coming and I’d rather be prepared than not.”

The stacks seemed to have no end, twisting and turning like a labyrinth. There was no sunlight, only the harsh glow of florescent bulbs humming with electricity. It felt like being underground almost, a monument to knowledge with little warmth or invitation. The way the shelves, overladen with books, rose up into the sky almost threatened to swallow you whole.

Jean felt like she had been wandering for hours but knew it hadn't been that long. The sound of voices close by made her slow her approach, until she was able to recognize at least one of them: Haller. It was only a small comfort in familiarity, nothing more. With him there she didn't know what would happen should something set him off. The other woman she knew of, Rachel, but didn't really talk to much.

She was barefoot, still wearing her pajamas as she awkwardly folded her arms. "What is going on?" she said finally.

Haller's eyebrows might have risen, though the expression was difficult to read. While the two women's avatars reflected the inconvenience of an unexpected interruption of sleep, his was the same flat, simplified sketch of a man as ever. Between Jean's pajamas and Rachel's sleep-rumpled street clothes he felt slightly overdressed.

"Jean," Haller said, more of an acknowledgement than question. He felt, rather than saw, Rachel's prepared attack dissipate into nothingness. "We were just trying to determine that ourselves. I think we've been drawn onto the astral plane."

Jean blinked at Haller a moment before her eyes narrowed thoughtfully and she glanced around, taking a closer look.

"That would explain a few things," she said. Slowly approaching the nearby book case, she tilted her head.

"Question is, how? And why?"

Leaning in, Jean plucked a book, entitled _Mom and Dad - Presents_ It was older, well-worn with age, and a honey brown color like leather.

Jean paused a moment, then slowly opened the book. The pictures were in first person perspective, and seemed to spring to life like something out of _Harry Potter_ , yet there was sound.

_"Smile, sweetheart!"_

_Topaz blinked rapidly as her mother snapped a picture just as she finished unwrapping her present. "She's gonna go blind, love," Luca laughed, taking the camera from Alice. "Here, let me turn off the flash."_

_"No, that's not how you do it," Alice insisted, frowning and trying to take the camera back. Topaz rolled her eyes at both of them before looking down to see what she'd gotten. It was a jacket. A really nice jacket, actually. She pulled it out of the box to examine it._

_"Do you like it?" Alice asked, abandoning the camera and her husband. Topaz smiled as she pulled the jacket out, holding it up to examine it._

_"Yeah, it's brilliant."_

_"Test picture," Luca announced, holding up the camera. "Alice get in close, Topaz try to smile this time. Oh that's not a smile," he complained at the look the young teen gave the camera. "Come on, actually try..."_

Jean glanced up. That voice....It was familiar, someone she'd run into before.

"Look at this. I think they're someone's memories. One of the students....Topaz?" she said. She glanced around again.

"I don't think we're on the Astral Plane."

Haller frowned, then turned to the bookshelf and prized out a volume of his own. It felt like any other book, but when he opened it . . .

_Her first spell wasn't anything flashy or even all that impressive, when it came right down to it. The little ball of light hovered around the eleven year old's head for a few moments before blinking out of existence again._

_But oh were Luca and Alice proud. Topaz giggled a bit as they hugged her, their happy exclamations getting lost in their excitement. "It wasn't that great," Topaz tried to insist over them even as she grinned, basking in their pride. She'd seen them do way better spells. Compared to that a tiny ball of light didn't even count._

_"Shush, it was perfect," Alice informed her, kissing her forehead as Luca just beamed._

Carefully, the counselor closed the book and put it back where he'd found it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that this was the first time he'd ever seen Topaz happy.

"You're right," he said, eyes sweeping across the ruined archives. "These are her memories, but something's wrong. Even if her shields are full of holes and we're looking at an empathic surplus, this place shouldn't feel so . . . exposed."

"I usually only morph into ectoplasm on the astral plane," Rachel pointed out, promptly dissolving into an astral-blob and floating over to Jean to illustrate her point. The shield above their heads expanded to cover the other redhead's as Rachel re-assembled and started poking around at the books. "And many things can be created or faked on the astral plane."

She did not tag anything further on to that as she started flipping through volumes at random, never watching a single memory through before closing it and choosing another from a different shelf. If Kwannon could create an entire world to house her life in, a library of memories was not all that far-fetched. For all she knew, even David and Jean were constructs.

Jean studied the other woman. "And if you're wrong, we could risk damaging this girl's mind if we're not careful," she replied, shaking her head.

"Things have gone wrong on the astral plane and in people's minds before."

She glanced around. "I don't know how I got here, and I'm guessing either of you don't know either. I'm just asking that we take things delicately until we know exactly what we're dealing with."

Haller looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers. The corners of his mouth drew tight. He'd tried to create a shield, as Rachel had, but he couldn't push it past his fingertips. His telepathy was still useless.

"I agree," he said aloud, dropping his hand. "It's hard to tell what we might trigger. For now, let's see if we can find any seams we can open, or signs of what might be going on. Ray, you've already got a barrier. Do you mind taking the lead?"

"Sure," Rachel popped the books back into place and glanced around. Then, with an almost casual sort of shrug, she picked a direction and headed straight. "Try not to touch the water, though. There is some fucking creepy shit going on in there."

The taller man started after her, then turned back to Jean. "It seems to cause some kind of emotional overload," Haller told her, gesturing to the seemingly innocuous puddles. "Be careful."

Jean slowly nodded at Haller, her face blank. "Rachel already had me not wanting to get near it after the mention of 'fucking creepy shit' but thank you for the explanation," she said simply, keeping a good yard behind him as they walked.

"Sometimes what you lack in specifics you can make up for with profanity," Haller remarked, and simply continued on. The implications of Jean's careful neutrality slid off him like oil from a hot pan.


	2. Yin and Yang 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Meggan, Hope, Emma, Quentin and Fourteen, everything is puppydogs and rainbows. Literally. To an unbearable degree.
> 
>  
> 
> _Meggan played by Rachel, Hope by Eva, Emma by Amanda, Quentin by Ben and Fourteen by Chris._

Quentin had actually gone to bed at a reasonable hour, for the first time in . . . way too long. And he wasn't even chemically assisted this time. Just plain old post-coital exhaustion had him conked out as soon as his head hit the pillow. It would have been a great night, too, had Lisa Frank apparently not developed psychic powers and invaded his dreams with an explosion of color and overly adorable young animals.

There was something that looked like a molten rainbow on the grass. Or at least molten rainbow candy... and from the other things in it, pretty sticky. Hope frowned at it, hovering a little closer as she continued to take in the strange surroundings. She had suddenly found herself hovering in this strange landscape in her astral form, but she had no idea where she was. This definitely was not the astral plane she was familiar with.

Emma was used to vivid and unusual dreams; she was reasonably sure it was a side-effect of her telepathy and her brain having to sort and store an abundance of memories, senses and thoughts that weren't its own. What she wasn't used to was an abundance of pink that made her feel like there had been an explosion in a Barbie factory and so much cuteness that it would have made Walt Disney feel nauseous.

"This," said Emma, sitting up sharply from where she had found herself lying in grass as green as jewels and as soft as clouds, while tiny bluebirds played in the air above her head, occasionally diving down and grabbing bits of her hair and attempting to braid it, "is NOT my dream." Irritably, she swatted at the tiny birds, enough that they at least stopped actively attempting to style her.

Standing up and nimbly attempting to kick the tiny rabbit that had suddenly appeared and started rubbing vigorously at her ankles, Emma sent her mind questing out across the dream. Nightmare? Astral plane? Mindscape? It had aspects of all of them. It also had fellow inhabitants, she realised as her questing mind touched upon a mind she recognised as at least one of the Cuckoos. If the Cuckoos had been dipped in sugar and coated in caramel anyway.

Looking down at the unfamiliar warm sensation around her ankles, Emma kicked out more vigorously than before, attempting to dislodge a positive swarm of tiny rabbits that were adoring her feet, along with (she squinted slightly), possibly some kind of tiny badger? Or maybe a minuscule fox cub? Kicking out once more, Emma managed to clear enough of a path to allow her to stride in the direction of the mind she had found, nimbly dodging at least two tiny fauns that emerged from the edge of the forest clearing to gaze adoringly in her direction. Swatting at the bluebirds again, as their wings brushed her face in ecstatic flight, Emma strode into the dazzlingly multi-coloured forest trailing her adoring menagerie behind her.

Every night when 14 lay down to sleep, she'd find herself back in Canada. Often she was back in the pods, floating helplessly as scientists poked at her brains. Other times, she'd stand in her old house, watching blood drip from the walls and flow down the stairs while listening to the screams of her parents. So that night, when her world seemed to twist violently and whisked her away from the pungent copper smell of blood, she was almost relieved. It wasn't like her nightmares could get worse.

Everything was neon. The most disgustingly wretched shade of bubblegum pink and sunshine yellow 14 had ever seen. The grass (blindingly candy-apple green) smelled cloyingly sweet, and she was _certain_ she could hear obnoxiously cheerful voices singing about lollipops and rainbows somewhere in the back of her mind.

"What," she said more than asked, sounding and looking all of eleven years old in her powder-blue dress.

Somehow, it had gotten worse.

The sudden presence of more minds was both a relief and a bad omen to Quentin. On the one hand, he had twice now proven himself incapable of escaping the Astral Plane when trapped there, but he stood a much better chance on this third round if there were other people with him. Especially Frost. On the other hand, if something or someone could even ensnare all of these people in the first place . . . he shuddered at the thought of what that could mean.

He grabbed a handful of cotton candy that replaced the foliage of a nearby tree and ate small tufts of it as he followed the signal he recognized as Emma's. "This is like munchie heaven," he mused. "Someone's gotta lay off the Parker Brothers."

Meggan had gone to bed early, exhausted but in a strangely happy chirpy mood despite a head that was pounding. That mood did not explain the tree she wanted to climb being covered in molasses. It had appeared on the bark as she had begun her way up, and had feared it would trap her, before she’d flown away from it. She now backed away from the honey dripping from the shrubbery, because it just felt wrong. She couldn’t explain the sensation.

She pointedly ignored the polka dotted unicorn that bounded away and over a ridge. That was more due to surprise at seeing others as she flew, who weren’t part of the candy cane shadows being cast from another tree. Now she shook her head as she landed. “This is still a dream, right? I’m not hallucinating? Despite the mess? I—I really don’t want to scale Gum Drop Mountain, and hike through the Molasses Swamp, before I have to fight a ROUS to wake up,” she said now in confusion. She had played Candy Land with Amanda long ago. This felt like a whole other thing.

Had someone cursed them to a molasses covered parallel world, where everything was happiness and sunshine and fantastical creatures roamed? This was more disconcerting for Meggan than anything else.

Hope had continued her way, not running into anyone, nor did she pick up any of the bright colored line which sometimes allowed her to track something on the the astral plane... so definitely not astral, wherever this was. Suddenly a flock of tiny candy pink birds shot at her, twittering loudly. She roared back, but the birds passed harmlessly through her. 'Where am I?' She muttered to herself.

Biting her lip, she looked up. Maybe above the trees she could get a fair look around. Floating up she scanned around as soon as she broke through the foliage. Unnaturally bright greens, interspersed with other colors, all before her. A stream of brown sticky liquid wound its way through the landscape. Finally, in a lighter spot not too far away, she spotted someone moving. Quickly floating over, she descended:

"Quentin? Is that you?" She didn't know the boy personally, but had him seen around and on the journals.

Quentin had plucked a bird out of midair — an actual flying, chirping marshmallow Peep — when Hope called to him. Startled, he released the Peep and turned to the newcomer. The visage of a young woman, floating like a ghost in the Astral Plane, her aura exuding an apprehension in stark contrast to the childlike whimsy of this place, brought one person immediately to mind.

"Daniella?! Oh fuck no. No offense, but I'm not ready for this bullshit again. It was bad enough when you made me share a brain with Maximoff. Can't a guy get a break for more than just one month? Wait, you're not her." Quentin heaved a sigh of relief. He was not stuck in the Canadian telepath's mind again. She was still hopefully safe and far far away. "You're, uh, wait, I know this one. Stephanie?"

Hope rolled her eyes at him, trying to ignore the shifting bright colors in his aura. "You might think about a moment of consideration before you speak. And it's Hope, thank you very much."

Emma made a disbelieving noise as she suddenly appeared in the clearing. "I've barely met Quentin and I am fairly certain that 'consideration before you speak' is not in his repertoire. Have either of you seen the Cuckoos yet? I can feel them in here but I haven't been able to find them yet?" Irritably, Emma swatted at the small bluebird who had settled on her shoulder, crooning some sickly-sweet song directly into her ear.

"No idea," Quentin replied, shrugging. "Hey, is Jean here, too? If we all are then she should be, too . . ."

"She's not," a voice chimed out. "It's just us."

14 had kept tracking the various mental signatures as they all gathered, slowly making her way towards them. She could feel Emma nearby, plus a few other school members she'd yet to interact with. They were the only ones anywhere nearby.

She steeled herself for the looks and questions she knew were going to head her way, reinforced her shields as high as they would go, and walked over the hill and into view of the others.

"And now it's a party," she commented dryly, hand on a hip.

Hope stared a little as what seemed like a miniature version of Emma entered the clearing. "This night is getting stranger and stranger." Tilting her head at the young girl, she gentled her voice: "I do not think I have seen you around. How did you end up here?"

14's glare in an eleven-year-old body was unsettling. "I'm not a child. Don't treat me like one."

She paused, doing her best to slam her walls back up to try and _drown out that singing_.

"Where are we?"

Emma frowned. "I've been mapping out as far as I can find and I'm fairly certain we're not on the Astral Plane. It feels like a mindscape. More accurately, a dreamscape." She raised an eyebrow. "Or, perhaps more accurately, we may be trapped in someone's nightmare." With a neat flick of her fingers, Emma managed to ping the bluebird off her shoulder and, with stunning accuracy, into the trunk of a nearby tree. It hit hard in cartoonish explosion of blue feathers, then flew drunkenly off into the forest, chirping dizzily. The small rabbit and tiny kitten at Emma's ankles looked up for a moment, considered their position and then went back to rubbing themselves against her shoes in ecstasy. Emma looked down and shuddered. "Definitely a nightmare. I think it's one of us that's in the dream, but we're not all here yet." She reached out with her mind again. "Meggan is out there. Close by."

Meggan herself was busy trying to get some strange Bambi imitation to stop following her. It was better than the unicorn she had ignored earlier, and not as weird as the Pegasus she had almost crashed through when she flew. It was strange, since it actually did resemble a cartoon character. She hurried around a tree, and reached the clearing where everyone else was moments later. “Oh! Hi,” she said when she saw everyone there. The deer was two feet away and now it was eating rainbow colored grass that smelled like licorice. “I swear that I didn’t play with any magic.” Because that would have been her first thought when this kind of thing happened.

"Definitely not my dream," Quentin offered. "No go-go boys. So how do we get out of here?"

Emma considered Meggan and then reached out with her mind again. "I think that's all of us," she said. "I can't feel anyone else in here." She rolled her eyes as the strange Bambi deer that had followed Meggan in looked up from the grass, saw Emma, got a look of fawning adoration and bowed down at Emma's feet, offering its tiny antlers for a scratch. Emma decided that life would be easier if she just ignored it completely.

She reached out further with her mind, tracing outwards, finding the edges of what seemed, most probably, a dreamscape. "I think I can try and get out of here," she said. "And if I can get out, then I know who the Sleeping Beauties are and can try and do something about it. I don't think this is magic. I think it's something affecting the psis. So if I turn diamond, I pretty much stop being a psi at that point. It might kick me out of here."

14 thought about speaking up. Emma's plan was logically sound, but mixing forced telepathy with what was effectively a telepathic block would still be dangerous.

Ultimately, she realized, she'd let Emma do the test first. It it worked, she'd try and follow. If it didn't...

...well, better her than 14.

She nodded in Emma's direction.

Emma tilted her head at the Cuckoo sister, wondering why the girl thought Emma would need her approval, then shook it. Whatever.

"Hope," said Emma. "I think you probably count as our responsible adult once I go. If I go. If what I'm trying works, then I will probably just vanish. If you can all keep together at that point and not set fire to anything, I'll try and get you all out. The other option is that exciting things may happen." Emma took a deep breath. "If I turn inside out in front of you or burst into flame, keep together and try some other way to get yourselves out. I doubt it'll kill me, but if it's something big enough, the backlash might render me less than useful."

"I'll do the best I can." Hope gave her a quick nod. "And if you do not succeed, perhaps someone else will." Her own abilities were different from the other psis' so maybe she would have more luck.

"Well," said Emma and then reached inside herself to find the part of her inside the dreamscape that corresponded with her control over her diamond form. In the real world it was a nearly unconscious reflex now, honed into tight control. Here it was like swimming through deep water, but eventually Emma found what she was looking for. Somehow, she wasn't surprised in this dream that her diamond form was going to be activated by pressing a large red button marked "Push me" in cartoon letters with a giant arrow pointing at it. Taking the time to roll her eyes again, Emma pushed it.

Diamond ran down her veins like ice and screaming cold and fire, every cell burning from the inside out. For a flickering moment, Emma could feel her eyes opening, saw the shape of her own bedroom, and then the cold fire rose higher in her veins. "No," she screamed. "Let me through!"

There was the hint of moonlight through a window as she reached through the pain to try and wake herself up in the real world and then it shattered and Emma shattered with it.

In the dreamscape, for a moment, Emma appeared to be encased in a giant diamond, then the facets broke apart and swirled around themselves, taking pieces of Emma apart and putting them back in patterns that relied far too heavily on the concept of entrails to be anything less than truly disgusting. Then the diamond broke apart and Emma, whole again, slumped to the ground.

That... looked painful, 14 reflected. She was suddenly very happy she'd let Emma go first. 14 crouched down next to the slumped form of Emma, careful not to touch. There was no telling exactly what had happened.

A small army of squirrels had surrounded Emma. At least a few of them were gently nudging her as though they were distressed she wasn't moving.

"Well," she said quietly. "That answers at least one question." And raised so many others

Hope floated next to Emma, looking down and shaking her head. "Well... that was no good. Anyone have any other ideas?"

"Fuck this." If one of the most skilled telepaths in the world couldn't excise herself from this diabetic nightmare, then what chance did the rest of them have, Quentin wondered. They would be stuck here and, if they didn't kill each other first out of sheer boredom, then that pegasus flying overhead would probably end up developing a taste for human flesh. So, for real, fuck that.

"These kiddie gloves have to come off," he insisted, kicking one of the squirrels as he stomped past the fallen Emma. The rest of the pack turned to him with angry, Disneyfied overly large eyes. "I'm sorry for whoever's brain we're in, but if Frost of all people can't get us out by being all gentle or whatever, then we ought to . . . fuck!" Whatever he was going to suggest next, he had no chance to say. The rodents were taking revenge on their assaulted compatriot by swarming Quentin. He stumbled back and lost his balance, careening into a deep pool of molasses. The squirrels gathered at the edge, chittering in amusement.

Quentin, oddly enough, seemed to share their amusement even as he sank into the viscous goop. He flailed about, laughing like a child at the beach, although the expression he wore was one of desperation as he tried in vain to pull himself out, and the squirrels nipped at his fingers every time he got too close to the mouth of the pool. Finally, suffering from bruised fingers and eyes almost crusted shut by the crystallizing sugar, he lashed out with a localized burst of neon pink psychic energy. All around him, the scenery seemed to peel away and reveal a hidden world behind it. The molasses thinned and and decolored into water, the cartoon squirrels transformed into smaller, dumber animals, and the grass dulled to a more real-world color. The laughter immediately faded, too, and Quentin crawled out of the pool, panting and almost radiating his displeasure.

"The fuck was that," he demanded, stripping off his jacket and shirt to wring them out as the dream world began to reassert itself and creep back into the landscape.

Meggan was worried for Emma, but she seemed to still be in the land of the living. She was at her side…until Quentin fell into the molasses. She had watched Quentin’s progress, and shook her head. “Now I’m really glad that I didn’t slap away the Martian Bambi, and just ran…and avoided stepping in the molasses puddles,” Meggan mused. If the squirrels were mad at Quentin for behaving that way, then something like a little shove might have left her with a legion of deer itching to fight. She wasn’t sure how to help with that mess. It was disgusting.

The landscape still felt wrong, even as it resettled into the cartoon mishmash. She had also felt an uncomfortable twinge of something she couldn’t explain. It…had lessened in whatever it was when things changed. Just for an instant. But, Meggan realized, Quentin had made a bit of progress, of a sorts. She reached out to nudge an errant and excited squirrel away, as it started in his general direction again.

There wasn’t anything she had that she knew of that could make a dent in gooey molasses river sludge. Meggan didn’t have a towel with her. Then again, if she did, the towel would probably become a fruit roll-up. “Right. You managed to get through there for a second. I don’t know if you should blast harder, or wait for the woodland animals to stop watching you like that, and then try something. Did the molasses hurt you?” Not a stupid question here—even if it didn’t look like it was acidic.

"No, it just felt weird," he answered, "Like I felt happy, almost. Something was invading my head and trying to push out everything negative. Fucking psychic quicksand. Also it tasted disgusting." There was an off-color comment about stick substances to make there, but standing half-naked, surrounded by women, he decided to let it slide for once. Must be the remnants of the molasses still in his head.

“That’s almost how I felt earlier, too. Even just from the little bits dripping off the trees, so I avoided the puddles of it,” Meggan realized. That must be the wrong feeling. This might not be the best plan ever, but she moved to touch it, too…just not go for a swim in it. She knew she wouldn’t pull back a bloody stump, since Quentin looked okay. Well, he wasn’t a pod person, but he seemed okay. Meggan leaned over to brush it with her fingers, before she put her whole hand in after a moment’s hesitation. There was an odd ripple effect.

Wherever she touched transformed into water. Regular, clean water, but it was only small portions of the molasses. “Oh!” Meggan moved back in surprise. One small pool of water floated in the greater mess of the molasses. The clarity of it was the exact size of her hand.

"Well, isn't that interesting," said Emma, from her reclining position. She considered standing up and then felt the state of her body and her mind and decided that a reclining position was exactly what she was going to stay in for a little while. "Quentin, would you mind trying another blast? Just there." Emma lifted a hand that shook slightly and pointed at a small sapling with leaves so green they almost glowed.

Quentin slung his wet shirt and jacket over his shoulder and focused on the sapling. Concentrating his telepathy for offensive uses came much more easily here in a realm composed of that energy, although there was no doubt that months of blood, sweat, and tears training with Xavier and Jean made this application come much more naturally than it did over the summer in District X. He held out his hand and clenched his fist, releasing the energy he had stored, and as before, the psiscape around the sapling turned to cinders, revealing the mundane reality beneath. And once again, it was only a brief respite before Candyland came back.

"I'm going to need some help with this," murmured Emma from where she reclined. As if in response to her words (and it was a Candyland dreamscape, so it was entirely possible that it _was_ in response to her words) a unicorn stepped delicately out from behind the trees and made its way to Emma's side. Kneeling down on snow-white knees, it proffered its horn to Emma, who thankfully grasped it and used its leverage to drag herself upright, until she could lean heavily upon a silken-soft shoulder, while the unicorn gratefully nuzzled at her fingers. Pretending that none of that had ever happened and that she wasn't leaning against an impossible fairytale creature, Emma looked at the Cuckoo. "Celeste," she said. "I need to show everyone something but my powers - let's just say they've shut down in protest after whatever happened with the diamond form. It's hardly the thing either of us want to do, but your powers are the most familiar to me of everyone here. Would you mind loaning me some of your telepathy so I can make a switchboard for a moment?" Conceding to the barest modicum of courtesy, Emma added grudgingly, "It is important."

There was something paradoxical about Emma in that moment, 14 thought. Hard like diamond, but brittle like glass. Trying to hold herself regal and forthright, but leaning on the fantastic and impossible. 14 figured this was a rare moment that she would be unlikely to ever see again. There was a long, very awkward pause.

"Could you tell, or was it just a lucky guess?" she asked quietly. She shook her head. It didn't matter, and she didn't give Emma time to actually respond. Instead, she offered just the slightest strand of her own power out to Emma. Her mind like a coiled spring, ready to sever the link and snap back the moment it felt like anything was going wrong. She didn't think Emma would actually _try_ anything, not with so many witnesses. She certainly wouldn't.

Still, an ounce of prevention and all that.

She turned to look off at some unimportant point in the distance, her mind acutely aware of how dangerous what she was doing was for herself. "Make it quick."

Emma accepted the tendril of power with all the delicacy of a Victorian lady barely deigning to touch the scrofulous hand of some impertinent suitor. Despite her desperate desire not to be doing this (and the screaming inside a small box inside her head that this was her own power, stolen from her), Emma felt the instant familiarity of the Cuckoo’s power, so easy for her to use. With a practiced touch, she reached out to everyone there and showed them what she had observed when Quentin had blasted the sapling. Not just an ordinary tree beneath its candy coating, a damaged tree – scorch-marks streaking it, a crumbling of small portions of the outer layer of bark. As soon as she was certain everyone had seen it, Emma dropped her contact with Celeste as if it burned.

“So – if we blast it or burn it, we damage the mind beneath it. And from the reaction of the pond water to her touch, I suspect that means that it would be Meggan’s mind we’d be damaging. So we’re not going to be able to blast our way out of here. Or dig our way out. Any suggestions for other ways to escape?” Absentmindedly, Emma ran her fingers through the silken forelock of the unicorn as it turned to nuzzle her, soft concern in its eyes.

“Find whatever made my head turn into all of… _this_...and see if it can be reversed without me rolling around through miles of the licorice grass.” She hoped it could be fixed. With this knowledge, Meggan almost felt like apologizing for what were her brain squirrels biting Quentin, but decided it wasn’t really her fault. It also wasn’t their biggest problem, if everyone was stuck in her candy coated brain. She sort of wondered if petting the absurdly adorable things in her head for a prolonged amount of time would make them revert back to whatever they had been before, or make them attack her.

"I'd assume that, whatever it is, it's the same thing keeping us here," 14 observed. "But there's something else more pressing. Look."

She crouched down and put her hand on the candy grass. A small patch of the blindingly candy-colored green was stripped away, revealing rather normal-looking grass behind it. "Am I the only one who feels that?" she asked, holding it for just a moment longer before Candyland surged back under her fingers.

"Not that, but... I am seeing something..." Hope replied, having drifted into her aura sight. "This place is alive in emotion. And wait... I can see the bonds! Bonds to people who are not here! I might get out if I follow one of them." She announced excitedly.

"Figures," Quentin said. "There's another fifty psis in the mansion so if we're stuck then they should also be. Jean's probably there, too." He paused and then quickly put his shirt back on, ignoring how it uncomfortably clung to him.

Hope finally zoomed on a fairly familiar thick thread, disappearing in the unknown. "I don't know about Dr. Grey, but I have a definite thread I can try follow to Topaz. And..." She fell silent for a moment as she focused on the threads. "And one to Meggan I can follow back if I have to."

“Go to whoever you can,” Meggan agreed. That had to be the way. One of the others had to be able to get them out of this mess. Or maybe Topaz knew something of how to stop this. “And please be careful, Hope.” She didn’t want Hope to get hurt trying to get out.

"I will be. And please, be careful yourself." With that, Hope floated up and followed the thread only she could see, disappearing from sight quickly. 

“Well, that’s that then,” said Emma. “Quentin, Celeste, if you can keep scanning as best you can, and try and maintain contact with Hope, we will hopefully be able to find out where’s she’s gone. Meggan, can you just make yourself…” Emma searched for the right word for a moment, then shrugged, “as available to Hope as you can, so she can find you easily. In the meantime,” Emma turned as the unicorn kneeled daintily down, settling into repose until Emma could slide herself on to its back and it could stand again, “I’m going to find out what’s in our immediate vicinity here.” She patted the unicorn’s neck gently, nudged it with one gentle heel. “We’ll quarter the area, so I’ll be no more than ten minutes away maximum. I’m sure Celeste will be able to find me if anything’s needed.” Another nudge and Emma and her snow white steed set off into the forest, an adoring trail of bluebirds, squirrels, kittens and puppies trailing behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> X-Project is an X-Men Movieverse/MCU RPG on Dreamwidth. It started in 2003, set right after the second X-Men movie, and from there took on a life of its own. Thirteen years later it’s become a universe all its own, and includes characters from all walks of Marvel life – no character is too small or too obscure for X-Project. We roleplay mainly through writing logs on email, as well as posts on Dreamwidth.
> 
> If you're interested, check out the below links!
> 
>   
> [Welcome to X-Project](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Welcome_To_X-Project) | [Application](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application) | [Available Characters](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Unplayed_Characters) | [Game Wiki](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) | [Read The Game](http://xp-friends.dreamwidth.org/read) | [FAQ](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=FAQ) | [Contact Us](mailto:x_moderators@googlegroups.com) | [Follow Us on Twitter!](http://twitter.com/#!/xprojectrpg) | [Rules](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Policy) | [Tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/blog/xprojectrpg) | [Application Checklist](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application_Checklist)  
> 


	3. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Topaz's mind becomes ever-more hostile, the group encounters a surprise visitor. And while Hope and Haller fail to escape, they make a different sort of headway.

The rows were endless. While having their lack of progress revealed by the Dewey Decimal System would only have depressed them, it would at least have provided some sort of orientation. Instead the only landmarks were ruined library paraphernalia. Here a stack of books lay in a puddle, pages bloating with water. There a ladder stretching above the dim lights and into the darkness of the stacks above. And all around them the _drip, drip, drip_ of water.

"The damage seems to be getting worse," Haller noted after a time. He gestured to a shelf with the planks split straight through, spilling its contents across the aisle. "Maybe something came this way. Do either of you sense anything?"

"Nope," Rachel popped her 'p' over a shoulder as she lifted them up and over an overturned chair. "Zero signs of any doors or exits either. But you know me and my TP. We're sketchy at best. Dr. Grey? Anything from way back there?"

Jean furrowed her brow thoughtfully. "It's hard to--" she began, taking a step forward, when the rotting boards underneath her feet gave way with a hideous creak, weakened by Rachel and Haller passing over them. Her arms flew up over her head and she let out a startled scream as she plunged below the floor into the depths, water erupting in her wake with a heavy splash.

The water enveloped her from head to toe, the nature of its creation not even allowing her a sensation of hot or cold to focus on. Instead it bombarded her relentlessly with never-ending, overwhelming waves of fear, loneliness, pain, rage, disappointment and frustration.

The memories of every argument she ever had with Warren, her talk with Clarice and Scott, the deaths of patients she tried to save, her attempts to talk sense into Matt, Warren and Miles but with no avail, the feelings of fear when trying to sneak mutants across the border with X-Corps, her break up with her boyfriend in college, witnessing Haller break a man's arm in two, Clarice cutting off a man's finger ripped their way through her mind before settling upon the image of holding Annie in her arms as her life slipped away. The girl was like a broken doll, limp and bleeding while her eyes slowly dimmed.

Jean tried to shriek, but only succeeding in sucking in a mouthful of water as she thrashed about, fighting to find a foothold or something to grab onto but finding none.

It felt like dying, and wanting to die. Over, and over, and over again.

Haller's head snapped around just in time to see Jean's hand disappear through the floorboards. _Shit._ Rachel's shield had been so effective against the perniciously leaks it hadn't even occurred to him their footing might be at risk.

"Rachel, hold the floor!" Haller called, and dove for Jean. He closed his eyes and plunged his arms into the water up to his shoulders, grappling for her fingers. Something brushed his hand -- he grabbed it, and found a wrist. Jean.

Something cold was rising in his chest, but instinct was already working. Using their physical contact as a bridge Haller forced his stunted telepathy through his fingers and around the doctor, insulating her against the brutal onslaught. He found her other hand and pulled back towards the splintered break in the floor, and now that empty cold was crawling up his throat and into his mouth, the woman in his grasp a thousand miles away, but he kept pulling, pulling until her head broke the surface--

The moment of clarity was something Jean latched onto as her mind, like a wounded animal, instinctively reacted and telekinetically yanked her and Haller from the water with a huge burst of force that was more focused on escape than anything else. There was no trajectory, no plan, just a desire to get away.

They shot up and up before veering sharply to the left and careening uncomfortably close to a splintered shelf, with no signs of stopping.

Rachel's shield had shrunk with a thought, a tick before they collided head-first into the very solid barrier. It very quickly became apparent to her, however, that their flight was not controlled and holding just the damned floor was not going to cut it. Her powers gathered around her before a conscious decision was even made, propelling her upwards and stretching towards them.

A blue globe of energy, looking very much like a cushioned hamster's ball, encapsulated the pair of them less than a foot before they crashed into a book case. Rachel peered into it, worry evident as she slowly lowered them to the relative safety of a ledge.

Haller's hands gripped Jean's wrists like a vise. His body was jerking with short, sharp spasms, and his eyes were clenched shut. The slash-like scars that ran across his face and beneath the collar of his shirt, his astral form's only clearly defined feature, were torn open and streaming blood.

Even though he was grabbing her hard enough to be leaving bruises, Jean still stood there for a couple of moments, a completely distant look in her eyes.

It was the sight of blood that snapped her back to reality more than anything else, followed by the pain (after being swallowed by it, it was hard to really distinguish what was real at the moment). Reflexively, Jean tried to pull herself away with a shudder but found herself held steadfast.

The ledge beneath them gave way with a crack, the break so clean it looked as if it had been partially sawed through. The adjacent shelf gave way with it, vomiting its contents onto the psis – things that appeared to be books but did not open, like dummy copies used for display with the density of bricks.

Jean let out another cry as she found the both of them tumbling yet again, her stomach lurching. She wanted to throw up.

"LET GO!" she screamed in her blinding panic, expecting for them to crash into more water.

Then the world around them flashed blue and came to a sudden, jarring stop as their psionic cage was caught mid-air above the aisle. The books froze as one, and verdant eyes narrowed. With clenched fists, Rachel dropped her personal telekinetic armour and pumped a significant amount of energy into the shield around the other two psions instead, pre-empting the books' collective change in directions to follow their target. They pelted the barrier like kamikaze pilots, and Rachel scowled as a large tome clipped her in the shoulder. It was almost a light show, what with how the barrier pulsed blue with every hit it took.

Above them, a rumble sounded, reverberating down the room and slowly building into a loud roar. Bookcases crumbled onto themselves, collapsing, turning, gathering and falling. Right above them.

"Aw, what the fucking hell. Hang on."

In the next moment, they were flying; Twisting, turning and corkscrewing through falling debris at top speed. But Rachel dared only to dodge and deflect, swinging the globe around like both a shield and hammer. Her armour shimmered into existence again a second before she slammed head first into a falling shelf, the wood splintering with a loud crack.

The attacks, however, were varied, persistent and incessant, and they came nowhere close to a defendable perimeter or exit. The litany of profanities under her breath had been going on for a while, and neither David nor Jean seemed to be snapping out of their respective states any time soon.

Rachel reviewed the situation, weighed her options and stakes, and raised another wall of defenses against darting writing apparatuses. Her expression was a mask of cold fury, a fire blazing in her eyes that none but their sightless attackers to see.

Below her Haller gave out a sharp, sudden gasp and jerked away from Jean, finally releasing her arms. The flash of movement in Rachel's periphery drew her attention for a split-second, and in that second what had appeared to be a section of wall upwards of three stories high peeled away and began to roll towards them with alarming speed, like an enormous poster trying to curl back into shape.

Rachel’s gaze snapped away from the closest thing she had to family and toward what seemed like impending doom. It was hard to be kind when things were out to kill you. She may have been taught compassion as a babe, but blind benevolence had never been on the menu the way protection and survival was a constant theme in her life.

Death on one plane could mean death on another.

With that one thought, all hesitation fell away. Sparking blue energy rolled from her arms, shoulders to fingertips, a wave of relentless power building in rapid seconds until it towered three stories above their heads. She let it go with an echoing war cry and, as if in slow motion, watched as it met the tumbling wall with a resounding explosion that rang in their ears.

Concrete crumbled, wood disintegrated and paper burned up in seconds. The half-spent tsunami of charged telekinetic power shifted, flashed electric blue and morphed into a large claymore, which, shoved forward by two glowing arms, punctured the _air_ with a loud rip.

It took Jean a moment to realize everything had stopped, but Rachel's defenses had continued. It was easy to get caught up in protecting yourself when the world was falling down.

Something stood out among the storm of chaos once brought down both around them and by Rachel herself: a singular figure in the distance, silhouetted against the stacks of books. _Topaz._ It was the sight of the girl that reminded her of where they were, and the potentially devastating consequences of their actions. Despite the fact that they were merely trying to stop themselves from being harmed.

Jean glanced up to Rachel, then over to Haller and the ball of telekinetic energy around them.

"Rachel, stop! It's over!" she said, but it was unheard over the sound of books and shelves crashing down from the previous assault.

It was time for equivalent of a psychic slap.

Drawing in a breath, Jean released a psi blast that erupted through the ball of energy, causing it to pop and send herself and Haller falling again. She was so tired of falling.

This time, however, she had enough mental acuity to slow them both down to keep them from being less of a pancake and only maybe a couple of extra bumps and bruises.

The landing put them a few feet away from the young woman in front of them, the owner of the mind they curiously resided in.

 

[_*_]

 

Other than the steady _Drip drip_ that echoed with her footsteps, the area around Topaz was completely silent. Her foot stepped into a puddle, and a shiver of fear and terror ran up her spine. It faded as quickly as it hit her, but she still gasped and pulled back. Her foot was wet, she noted dimly as she continued on. The next puddle she hit resulted in a similar reaction, although the feelings were muted, like her mind was protected by cotton. After a while she stopped even noticing the puddles.

A sudden bolt of panic and fear hit her, and she whirled around, surprised. That wasn't fabricated emotions - those were real. There were people.

Oh thank god. She turned and sprinted toward the first signs of life she had felt since she'd started walking. It only took a couple turns around bookcases before the beat up and bedraggled psis landed in front of her. For a moment she could only stare.

"What the hell are you lot doin'?"

After landing on solid ground, Jean stared at Topaz for a moment or two, her eyes noticeably distant.

"We found ourselves here," she said finally. In the sudden rush of deafening silence and stillness and without the push to escape being a singular driving focus, it was easy for the negative emotions imbued by the water clinging to her skin and hair and clothes to cloud her mind and it was becoming a struggle to concentrate. Closing her eyes, Jean rubbed her forehead.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Topaz's eyes swept over the area, noting the disaster and how tired and wet Haller and Jean looked. Wet?

"I...went to bed. I think. What happened to you all? Why are you _wet?_ " Sure there were puddles but unless they got down on the ground and _rolled_ in them there was no reason for them to look like this.

"Traps, apparently."

This was from Haller, who was now sitting up. Neither his tone nor expression gave any indications of the violent seizure just moments earlier. This was made less reassuring by the blood still smeared across his face and soaking the front of his shirt.

"Or at least in part," the man continued with a glance at Rachel. The weapon had disappeared with the threat, but she was still obviously on her guard. He turned his attention back to Topaz. "If I had to guess, I'd say the mess is because we triggered your psychic defenses. Most people don't like intruders."

It took Topaz a moment to process Haller was even talking when she saw his face. "Okay, so...you're wanderin' around my...head-" And hell if that wasn't still _weird_ , "and somethin' decided you all were a threat and wants to drown you?" Something about that felt a little off to Topaz. Why water? It was a library, after all - the water wasn't exactly natural.

"Your head decided that, yes. Like I said, most people don't like intruders. The fact we hit traps probably means we're close to the center. Jean, are you all right?"

Jean was half turned away from the trio, her arms folded and huddled into herself, as if trying to stay warm. His voice, and the question, crawled its way into her head, pulling out the memory of what he'd done and paraded it in front of her. It was like he was taunting her.

"Oh my GOD. Why do you keep asking me that? You don't even care! Just shut the fuck up about it!" she snapped, turning to glare at him before she noticed everyone staring at her. With a heavy shudder, she immediately jumped, putting a trembling hand back to her forehead.

Rachel blinked at the older woman, the last of her telekinetic shields and armour disappearing with a deliberate ‘click’ of her teeth. Her usually expressive face was now a study on serenity, unnaturally still amidst Jean’s outburst of emotions and resumption of the steady _drip, drip, drip_. If her head was ringing from the psychic assault she had received from Jean, Rachel made no show of it.

“Dr. Grey—”

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she apologized quickly, taking deep breaths. Regardless of their prior interaction this was not the time and place. And he had saved her. He had pulled her out at risk to his own sanity. That meant there was some care there, some emotion. Otherwise he would've just left her to drown in the deep. Right? _Important. Think of that. This is not normal. Something else. Not my emotions._

"It's....it's hard to focus....there's still some residual..." she said, twirling her hand around her head in an aimless attempt to come up with a word.

"I...I think I'll be fine in a little while. It's starting to go away. I just need a little...." _Xanax. Whiskey. Sleep. Death. Not normal. Important._

"Time. But I can do whatever you need me to," she swallowed, glancing back up to the group, then finally to Haller.

"Are you going to be okay? Your wounds." She was admittedly curious about the previous scars that had opened up.

_Who did he try to kill to get those?_

_Shut up, fucking creepy shit addled-brain._

Haller blinked, then reached up to touch his face. His fingers came away red. More puzzled than alarmed, the telepath rubbed his sleeve across his face. When he lowered his arm the blood had been wiped away, revealing only old scars once again.

"Just some kind of psychosomatic response," he remarked, quirking an eyebrow at Jean. "I'm fine. And don't apologize. Those pockets seem to be some kind of emotional wells. Contact dredges up . . . something. Obviously I wasn't prepared for it either." There was a tiny crack in his neutral tone, as if he was tripping over some kind of rote diction, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Rachel stepped close enough to place a hand on his back where the others could not see. The discussion and lack of progress had gone on long enough. “Let’s move out of here. It’s not stable,” she said.

Haller, already climbing to his feet, paused. Hanging in the space where Rachel had made her attack was a fissure of light. It spidered across the air like a crack in a pane of glass, nearly oblique from where he stood. Even as he watched it dwindled into nothingness.

"Topaz, we should be near the core of your mind," Haller said, eyes still lingering where the fissure had been. "It'll be safer for us to talk there. Is there a direction that feels 'right'?"

Topaz frowned, turning in a slow circle, eyes slipping from row to row. "This way," she finally said with some amount of confidence. And she started walking.

Jean trailed behind Topaz slightly as she gradually showed signs of 'drying off.' She was careful to avoid the puddles this time, keeping a close, wary eye on her surroundings.

Haller followed a respectable distance away. Even though Topaz's steps were sure and solid he kept his guard up, and that was the only reason why a warning _plish_ didn't end in disaster.

A section of floor Topaz had passed safely over gave way beneath his foot. The edge of a floorboard dipped into the water it was floating on like an overburdened raft. He drew back before he could fall in, forcing a stunted shield around his foot before the emotional contamination could do any damage.

The counselor watched the bobbing floorboard disintegrate like rotted particle board, then raised his eyes to Topaz.

"I assume you're still a little tense," he remarked.

"Well let's see. I went to bed - I went to bloody _bed_ , and ended up trapped in this hell. Yeah, I'm tense." Haller had been Topaz's therapist long enough to know that heavy sarcasm like that was her last refuge when she was scared. She was stressed, she was trapped in her own head, and just to add to the fun she had three _other_ people banging around in her head probably causing a mess.

And she was terrified.

She cast an eye at the rows of books as they walked by them, still barely paying attention to where she was going. When she spoke again her voice was lower and much more insecure. "You didn't open any of the books...did you?"

"Just one," Haller replied without a shred of hesitation, though he carefully refrained from looking at Rachel. "I needed to confirm we were in a mindspace rather than the astral plane. It was mundane, maybe three minutes of your life. We were in the outskirts. The really important things will be hidden much deeper." His carefully exploring foot hit another loose section of floor. He stopped, frowning. "Your defenses aren't going down. This is going to be a problem."

Taking a step forward, Jean glanced over the floor with a look of appraisal, like one of the many games of chess she had played with Charles over the years.

"Wait," she said, carefully studying the floorboards.

"I have an idea," she said.

Jean turned, waiting for the others to move before she turned around back the way they came.

"Please take a step back."

After a few moments of uneventful waiting, a faint rumbling was heard as various bits of debris soon funneled in caused by the earlier battle. The once damaged pieces were soon molded into a makeshift, rudimentary bridge made up of bits of floorboard and shelving

"Topaz doesn't seem to be affected by the water. And if this is her mind, then maybe using stronger parts of it might help us get through."

"Brilliant," Rachel complimented, facial muscles losing some of the tension it had been hoarding since things had gotten messy. She gestured politely for Jean and Topaz to take the lead forward before she dissolved into a ball of energy that wafted over to hang around David's shoulders with a comforting pat to his brain.

The look of irritation on his face was easy to miss, and likely not apparent to Jean or Topaz. Rachel herself could only guess at what had caused that tic of frustration building between his eyes – It was the same one he had displayed those months ago when he couldn’t save her brain from rupturing from holding too many soul fragments inside of it. No, David did not wear helplessness well at all.

"And more efficient than holding a shield," Haller agreed, though inwardly he wasn't as neutral as he sounded. The touch of Rachel's mind only highlighted the extent of his own unease. He returned the touch with reassurance of his own, but even he could feel it rang hollow. It was more than his inability to influence the mindscape. The emotional well he'd fallen into had done . . . something. He didn't understand what, but he had to make sure it didn't happen again.

Pushing the thought away, Haller returned to practical matters. "Topaz, what's your sense of all this?" he asked as he followed Jean across the bridge. "Does this seem normal? –well, never mind, that's obviously a no. What I mean is, does anything in particular feel 'off'?"

Topaz didn't answer for a long moment. She kept her eyes on her feet as she walked along the bridge. She hopped off at the end, barely noticing the puddle her foot hit other than to acknowledge it was cold. "I mean I can't imagine my mind is the most _pleasant_ place to be even on a normal occasion," she dryly. "But this seems a little...extreme. The damage, the water...I don't think it belongs here."

"If I remember right, you've described your empathy as more nebulous," Haller ventured as Rachel's amorphous form orbited him like a lazy moon. "Pervasive, like radio static. The water seems concentrated. Is Jean right? That it doesn't affect you, I mean."

"I mean, my foot is wet." Topaz looked down at the offending foot. "The first time I stepped in a puddle I kind of got a...chill, I guess? Like when you're watching a horror movie and you know somethin's about to happen and you shudder. But after that, nothin'."

"So you felt something unpleasant, but not overwhelming." Haller looked at the redhead leading the way, still carefully assembling a bridge beneath them. "Jean? When you fell in, what did you experience?"

At first she didn't speak. Jean's concentration was on the bridge, boards and metal various debris coming together to make something that seemed almost elegant. She didn't look up, though her work did pause momentarily, her body stiff and rigid.

"Death," she said faintly before she continued on with renewed focus that seemed to become momentarily quick and harsh, almost frantic.

"And pain, and fear, disgust....rage...It was like all of these negative emotions had been...been...pooled together somehow. And I could feel it...all. All at once."

Haller noted the stiffness in Jean's posture; the brisk, business-like stride of someone trying to leave their feelings behind them.

"How has your head been lately?" he asked Topaz. "Have you been near anything or anyone unusual? Felt strange at all?"

The blob of light over his head gave a judgmental pulse at his lack of personal contribution. Haller ignored it.

"Been havin' headaches for a couple weeks now," Topaz admitted with a frown. "They happen sometimes so I didn't think much about it. Haven't really been out or anythin', mostly just hang around the mansion."

They turned a corner, and Topaz saw the caged area she had come out of earlier. "This is where I woke up," she said as she stepped off the path Dr. Grey was making, pushing the cage open with a creak.

Jean seemed startled and almost disoriented at the idea of stopping, and hung back as the others stepped past her. She examined the cage. It was older, well-cared for, and gilded with intricate designs that seemed to invoke comfort and sanctuary instead of confinement.

"Are you trying to keep yourself in or other people out?" she said absently to herself after a few moments, not really thinking about what she was saying or realizing she said it out loud.

She shook her head. "I....think if your mind sensed something wrong, however small, maybe your subconscious sent you to the safest place it knew whenever all hell broke loose."

"I'm not really doin' it on purpose," Topaz mumbled in response to Dr. Grey's question. She hadn't _tried_ to drown any of them, really.

"I know....I didn't mean to imply you were," Jean said with the quiet resonance of someone with similar experience.

Haller touched the wrought iron with the gentleness of a man resting a hand on a skittish horse, eyes scanning what lay beyond. Behind him the light that was Rachel pulsed softly, casting twinning shadows through the bars.

"Headaches," he mused, returning his attention to where Topaz stood by the gate. "Like when you experience overload?" Though they were clearly at the center Haller didn't move. He knew Topaz enough to suspect both of Jean's theories were correct. It wasn't just the situation -- Topaz was private, and she hadn't invited them here. Rather than move for the door he met her eyes, and the look was a question.

Topaz looked back at Haller, frown deepening. "Kind of...but sharper. When I just overload it's like someone hit me with a rock. These headaches have been someone hit me with a rock and then stabbed the back of my head at their worst. I usually just take a couple aspirin and go to sleep."

Jean stared down at a few small droplets of water that had landed on the ground. "You said you have headaches from overload, and these were similar...do you mean overload of emotions? This water is...pretty concentrated, and there's a lot of it, almost like a flood. Perhaps you were reacting to it?"

"But it only seems to be negative emotions," Haller observed. "Is your unconscious absorption usually that selective?"

"No." Topaz started deeper into the caged area, tired of waiting for them. "It's usually everything."

Once Topaz moved Haller finally allowed himself to follow. It was probably unlikely that Topaz gave any thought to the significance of allowing them into the center of her mind, and under the circumstances he probably shouldn't have bothered waiting at all. Still, he didn't like the sense of trespassing. It hit a little too close to home.

"This is a bad time for Charles to be out of town," he remarked absently. His eyes lingered on the books, some of them chained to podiums, some locked safely in display cases. Private memories. He tread carefully, testing the floor before he put his full weight on it, but as he'd expected they seemed to be past the traps.

He sighed. "I'm functionally useless. Jean, the damage seems less in here. Are you having any more luck sending out?"

Jean had just made her way inside the cage, taking the same care Haller had, and paused at Haller's question.

"I tried to wake up when you pulled me out of the water out of....reflex," she admitted.

"But I kept being sucked back in. I couldn't even get close to my body. I can try again."

Jean's eyes fluttered closed. After a few moments her astral form suddenly flickered in and out like a bad connection for only a split second before quickly becoming solid again.

Opening her eyes, Jean put her hand to her temple, then shook her head. She glanced away, rubbing her forehead, trying to stave off a headache.

"It almost feels like something is keeping us here. How, or why...I don't know."

No way out and no obvious reason to be in. Haller pressed a knuckle to his chin, thinking. It might be some form of powers evolution, but that wasn't a reassuring thought: Topaz didn't just absorb emotions, she metabolized them. If she'd trapped their astral forms this was not a good precedent. It also meant they may not be able to escape without help. Charles was out of the mansion, but Emma was almost as experienced. Providing this was a psychic matter, anyway.

"While I still can't believe this is a legitimate concern," Haller said, addressing the only other possibility circumstances and experience presented, "you haven't come into contact with any magical artifacts recently, have you?"

"I barely leave the mansion," Topaz said dryly. "If there was a magical artifact capable of makin' this-" She waved a hand, "happen it'd be in Amanda's hands and far away from me. Aside from the headaches everything's been normal."

The counselor spread his hands. "Considering how often demons seem to feature we have to rule out-"

And suddenly they had company.

Hope's eyes widened and rushed forward as she finally saw the person she had been looking for in the distance. "Topaz, there you are! I finally found you!" Looking around her she also saw several other people she had been wondering about as she let her focus go. "But... where are we???"

Haller blinked, then turned. There, emerging from one of the bookshelves like a ghost, was Hope.

"We're in Topaz's mind," he said automatically, surprised to see her. He'd thought he and the women had been drawn into Topaz's mind because their receptivity made them vulnerable, but Hope wasn't a telepath -- her element was the astral plane, not the mind.

"Hope?" Christ how many people were running around in her head. "What're you doin' here?" Possibly the stupidest question in the world but all she could think to ask in that moment.

"But in whose mind was I then..." She mused softly to herself. Must have been Meggan, if she knew her suite mate. "You are not the only ones trapped... where I just came from... Ms. Frost, Meggan, that pink haired guy and the girl who looks like Ms. Frost are trapped in a very sweet landscape. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively."

"Was there water there?" Jean spoke up. She was still wet but by now it had become mostly damp rather than soaked. Things were becoming clearer now, and she was feeling less like a crazy person.

"And was it emotionally charged? Like with negative emotions?"

The idea of the other person's mind being pleasant was not lost on Jean either. For some reason she was reminded of the second Ghostbusters movie with the slime, and half expected the Statue of Liberty to come stomping down the hallway.

The only ghosts that seemed to be here, however, were old memories.

"That was the strange thing. There was no water in the landscape... The river that I saw from the air... it resembled syrup more than any kind of water that I have seen." Hope replied, a little quizzically. "Do any of you have more idea of what is going here?"

Before the others could reply, the blue orb of light that had been drifting around the cage in lazy circles darted forward, passing _through_ Hope’s shoulder before coming back to pat her on the head.

Between one blink and another, Rachel’s body reassembled itself.

“You were trapped in another mindscape with other psis,” she repeated, one brow arched high. It sounded like almost _all_ the other psis in the mansion, actually. Which was worrying for a multitude of reasons. The redhead cocked her head to the side. “Are they connected?”

"I think I have seen all the other mansion psis by now." Hope confirmed. "I think Mr. Keller is the only one missing. And do you mean if two minds are connected.... I don't know. I was at least able to pass, but my psi-abilities are very different from yours."

Topaz scowled a bit, rubbing her temples. "Okay, so...I didn't do this. Whoever else's mind you were trapped in probably didn't do this because havin' people in your head sucks. So maybe we can work on trying to figure out a way to _fix_ this?"

Haller was thinking. So all the psis were caught except Julian -- and Julian's telekinesis was unique in that it had developed independently of the usual concomitant telepathy. That didn't explain how two empaths had managed to swallow the rest of the mansion's psis, but it was beginning to give him a better idea of the common thread.

The counselor turned to regard the other anomaly. "Hope doesn't travel though the same channels we do," he observed. "If she could move from Meggan's mind to Topaz's, maybe she can get out altogether. With enough of a push."

Jean shook her head, folding her arms. "I don't think that's a good idea. We still don't fully know what we're dealing with yet or why we're here in the first place. She could get hurt, or killed, or even all of us as well due to the connection we all seem to have, if we go charging in blindly without knowing what's going on," she said, absently running her fingers through her hair.

"Are we willing to take that risk, to Hope or to anyone else? I think we should try to meet up with the others first, see if we can....figure something out from here before we try with Hope."

Haller shook his head. "Considering all the time we've spent in here already, I think there's a good chance Hope _is_ the only way to find the others. And she won't be alone. If she's willing to try, I can help her -- I can't do much, but I do still have the ability to augment and shield. Topaz can't exactly leave her own mind, and if something does go wrong we'll need you and Rachel." He turned to Hope. "Still, it's ultimately your decision. Dr. Grey is right, there is a risk. I can't promise this will work, but I'll do everything I can to keep you safe."

"It looks like we might not have much of a choice. Ms. Frost already tried to leave and failed... and doing nothing might present its own risks. So let's do this." Hope immediately replied.

"Anything I can do?" If there was one thing Topaz absolutely hated, it was being helpless. The idea of sitting here waiting for Hope and Haller to do all the work made her skin crawl.

"Keep your eyes open. You know your own mind best. If something seems to be changing or you start feeling any pain, let Rachel and Dr. Grey know immediately. It may be a sign they need to pull us back. Or, if there's an opportunity, push the rest of you out." He knew it wasn't what the she wanted to hear, but Haller had nothing more for her. This was her mind -- how frustrating must it be to have no control?

That was a sentiment he could empathize with.

With an inward sigh Haller turned to Rachel. "Watch for potential adverse reactions on this end," he said.

His adopted sister nodded her acknowledgement, poking at an empty table by Topaz’s side before deeming it safe enough to perch her butt on top of it. Her expression and posture exuded calm and ease, but her eyes were bright and alert as she wagged a warning finger at them. “Don’t go taking your time now,”

Jean glanced down, still looking decidedly unhappy with this plan.

"Be careful," she said faintly.

“As best as they know how to,” Rachel assured her, and Topaz by extension. “We’ll get through this. We always do.”

***

Once they'd moved a safe distance from the other three, the telepath held out his hand.

"Just concentrate on getting to the astral plane," Haller instructed. "As long as we're in direct contact I should be able to give you a boost."

"I hope it works." Hope mentioned as she accepted his hand. "I tried from Meggan's mind, but I was not able to. I think I was lucky I was able to follow my own bond to Topaz." With those words she closed her eyes, letting the waves grow in her mental eyes until they would carry her away to the astral plane. 

Through her mind he could see it. Haller added his own power to the effort the visualization represented, subtly increasing the size of the waves -- a tide that was still gentle but inexorable, carrying them upwards. As Hope began to ascend, spirit-like, all sense of weight vanished; around and below them the library began to fade as if swallowed by encroaching mist.

So far it seemed to be working... Hope opened one eye to see the landscape beneath them fading and the darkness that was always her first impression of the astral plane was so near she could almost touch it. 

Suddenly a sharp lance of pain shot through her head, from the back where the tether usually connected her with her body. It was sharper than the discomfort she sometimes felt when she shifted between the planes. Still, she took 'measured' breaths, trying to let pass through her and fade away into nothing. 

He felt the pain shudder through her. Haller automatically reached out to dampen it, but he could feel the strain. They needed to be careful. Astral bodies were fragile, and Hope had never taken passengers before; too much stress could literally tear her apart.

"How are you doing?" Haller asked.

A wince stole over her face as another stab of pain lanced through her. "Not feeling great." She ground out as she fought to keep the image of the waves carrying her up in her mind. "Not sure if we are going to make it..." Suddenly the weight she was carrying seemed to triple as another wave of pain rose. 

"Stop. Don't hurt yourself." Pain existed for a reason, and the portion he was dampening from Hope was substantial. Straits were nowhere near dire enough yet to risk permanent damage. He studied the girl's pained expression carefully. 

"What if you try bringing us down to a level you can tolerate?" Haller asked. "Maybe we can get a better idea of what we're dealing with."

Her face still grim, Hope closed her eyes again, focusing on the picture in her mind. The waves subsided somewhat, manifesting in the outside world as being lowered closer to the mindscape again. Slowly the strain lessened and the lines around her eyes smoothed out. Finally she opened her eyes. "This I can handle." There was still a sense of discomfort, but nothing overly painful. 

Haller nodded. "Thank you. Keep me updated on how you're doing, okay?" With a final readjustment of his senses to monitor Hope's strain, he turned to regard what lay below.

The two psis hung over the astral body like satellites in local orbit. Topaz's mind stretched beneath them like a dark planet covered in labyrinthine terrain -- the stacks they'd seen in her mindscape, dimly lit and complex.

And then, like the image of a young woman from one angle and a crone from another, his perspective switched. Wreathed shadows became verdant forests, long hallways winding paths and rivers. It was no longer Topaz's mind, but one he'd touched before: Meggan's.

"This isn't right," Haller said aloud. "It's like two minds are existing in the same space." It hurt the eyes to study too long. He glanced back up to Hope. "How does this compare to what you see on the astral plane? Have you ever seen anything like this?" 

"Nothing like this." Hope shook her head slowly. "On the astral plane I either see some kind of nothingness... or an impression from a place in the real world... if there are people... I will see their auras with emotions and connections between them... but nothing has ever come close to this..." 

Haller was silent for a moment, considering. "It's similar for me," he said eventually. "The astral plane is basically ambient psionic energy. Individual consciousnesses are just pinpoints in it, like fish in the ocean. This is -- unusual. It's like looking into someone's head from the outside."

He turned his attention back to the ever-shifting mindscapes below them, forcing himself to look closer. There was something around the edges of the planets, something he hadn't noticed at first because of the wavering perspective. It wasn't apparent straight-on, but the planets were haloed by some kind of debris field. It had the organic quality algae drifts gathering near a lakeshore.

"There's something around the edges," he said.

Hope's eyes narrowed. "I cannot quite see it. Wait..." With the headache only a distant feeling, she was able to let herself sink in her perception that allowed her to see auras. "Whoa!?!?! This is weird."

Both mindscapes pulsed beneath her, two masses of color that seemed distinct, yet flowing in each other at the same time. She could easily distinguish the two... the darker shades churning together were clearly Topaz, while the flickering impossible bright mass must have been Meggan's. Finally she focused on the edges, where Haller had seen something... 

There was something there as well... black... with other dark shades shimmering beneath it. "I can see it... this is so strange. Look through my eyes, see what I see..." She urged him. 

Haller arched an eyebrow at her, puzzled, but didn't argue. Carefully he eased his way into her mind, closed his eyes, and looked through hers.

"It's . . . emotion," he realized, surprised. What had looked like a film of scummy debris from his own mind's eye looked like a satellite view of a tropical storm to Hope's.

"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" he asked, tearing his eyes away to look back at Hope. 

"Hmm... not on the astral plane, but..." Hope tilted her head, searching for what she had seen. "Those dark spots... I have seen them in auras of people with severe emotional trauma. Not always... but sometimes it almost looks like their aura has some kind of mold on it... or like it's rotting... Does that make any sense to you?" 

"Emotional damage. I only see it in terms of its psionic equivalent in someone's mind . . . deterioration, flooding, rubble. Nothing like this." Which was fascinating. If Hope could perceive trauma at a glance . . . but no, now wasn't the time. Haller turned back to the planets, dipping in and out of Hope's perceptions in an attempt to process what he was seeing.

"I don't think it's part of the girls," he said. "If it was, it would be fully integrated into their mindscapes. They're both empaths, but that's not how it works. They metabolize the emotions, pass them through. Emotional trauma is specific to the individual. Even if they can absorb the pain there's no way they should be able to take the damage itself."

Hope observed the dark spots a bit more. "It's not... Not a part of their mindscape of any of them. It's like..." She narrowed her eyes. "It's almost like it's clinging to them... even better... sticking to them. You know... when you peel a sticker of the window... there almost always is some kind of glue residue. It reminds me of that." 

Something that didn't belong. While he appreciated the outside confirmation, the implications weren't good.

"I still don't understand how their mindscapes can overlap," Haller said. "Can you take us closer? Maybe we can get a better look at it."

"That I can do." Hope focused on subsiding the waves in her mind even further and she felt the strain in the back of her mind grow even less strong as they descended. "This looks so odd..." She commented softly as she looked back and forth between Haller and the mindscapes. 

"Agreed." Now that they were closer Haller could tell the metaphorical planets weren't perfectly aligned. It was close, but the overlap wasn't exact: Meggan's mind inhabited areas Topaz's did not, and vice versa. It made him think of a nearly-complete solar eclipse.

"The debris field is constant," he observed. "In terms of the space it occupies, I mean. It doesn't seem to align precisely with one psyche or another. If it were simply some kind of empathy glitch I'd think the girls would each have their own individual atmosphere. This surrounds both of them."

"So something from the outside is attacking them?" Hope asked. She had far too little experience with this. "I can see the others..." She suddenly realized. "I mean... not them, but their auras and the connections between them." 

Haller slipped behind her eyes again. Suddenly the mindscapes were a satellite-image of urban areas at night, spots of light and color grouped together and connected by tendrils. Five minds, spread across two different consciousnesses. The signals pulsed with the minds that hosted them. They never faded completely, but clearly occupied different planes.

Haller withdrew from Hope's mind and rubbed his temple. "So locating us isn't the problem, which is good," he said, "but we're still out of sync."

"Out of sync?" Hope regarded him quizzically. "How do you mean that?" 

"Imagine the minds as two pages in a book, and everyone in them as words printed on one page or the other. When you close the book the sentences occupy almost the same space, but they're still on different pieces of paper." He paused, thoughtful. "Though . . . when you found us you just passed from one mindscape to another, right?"

"I manage to follow the bond between Topaz and me somehow." Hope nodded. "Though I am not quite sure how I managed to do that. I do not think I have done that before." 

"Which means wherever we've ended up, your tracking still works . . . at least to an extent. Which means whatever barrier is separating the mindscapes isn't absolute." Haller thought for a long moment.

"Okay, take us back. I may have an idea."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> X-Project is an X-Men Movieverse/MCU RPG on Dreamwidth. It started in 2003, set right after the second X-Men movie, and from there took on a life of its own. Thirteen years later it’s become a universe all its own, and includes characters from all walks of Marvel life – no character is too small or too obscure for X-Project. We roleplay mainly through writing logs on email, as well as posts on Dreamwidth.
> 
> If you're interested, check out the below links!
> 
>   
> [Welcome to X-Project](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Welcome_To_X-Project) | [Application](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application) | [Available Characters](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Unplayed_Characters) | [Game Wiki](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) | [Read The Game](http://xp-friends.dreamwidth.org/read) | [FAQ](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=FAQ) | [Contact Us](mailto:x_moderators@googlegroups.com) | [Follow Us on Twitter!](http://twitter.com/#!/xprojectrpg) | [Rules](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Policy) | [Tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/blog/xprojectrpg) | [Application Checklist](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application_Checklist)  
> 


	4. Breakthrough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having determined the geography, the two groups destroy the communication barrier the only way they know how: mild violence. Then, after a quick exchange of notes, the two senior psis come to a chilling conclusion.

14 had never attempted to track someone while in an astral mindscape before. It had always been in cities, or a school; somewhere in the real world where she could use her multiple bodies to triangulate an exact location with a high degree of accuracy. But here, she was alone. One 'body' meant one point of reference. But even more than that, this was Meggan's mind, which led to an interesting problem. She could still detect individuals, but everything around them was swamped with a vague sense of Meggan.

Adding to the complication was that it felt as though another mind had been laid over-top Meggan's mind, two distinct layers occupying the same space. Partially Meggan, partially another (who she had been informed was Topaz). Two distinctly unique minds clashing in her senses, just slightly out of phase with each other. They couldn't have been more different, and it left her with the same impossible feeling as they clashed within her senses.

It was a new challenge, and 14 loved it.

She didn't have her multiple bodies for reference in the astral plane, which made triangulation a bit of a difficult proposition. Still, she could feel the minds of the others, now that she knew what she was looking for. It was like stripping away the film over her senses, letting Meggan's overly-saccharine mind fall to the wayside as she focused in on Topaz'. She could sense Hope's mind burning like a torch in the darkness. They weren't far, but not close enough that her group could just linger where they were.

"The other group is this way," she said, turning in what appeared to be a random direction. "We should probably move, before someone does something _stupid_ like randomly punch holes in whatever is keeping the two minds separate, hoping to find us."

Meggan followed the lead, desperately hoping this would work. She didn’t want to end up just lost forever in the oddly disturbing river of perky sweetness that had become her dreams. She winced at the thought of anyone’s brain having holes punched through it, let alone hers or Topaz’. Or tunneled through it. That wasn’t something one liked to hear. “The Swiss cheese effect isn’t a comforting thought for anybody when a brain’s involved.”

One mind over, confidence was equally shaky. 

With a slow breath, Hope lowered the shields that she had learned to keep up over the years in an effort to strengthen the beacon that she was. "Now I really hope they find us. If they manage to hone in one me..." She mentioned a little insecurely. This whole event had been strange. "Wait..." Her eyes lost her focus as she observed the colored string the represented her bond with her roommate. It was a thin, fragile thing, but... " I think they are coming closer..."

Jean's attention momentarily flickered toward Hope, as if somehow she could see through on the other side, but she didn't say anything save for a simple nod. She was currently trying to calm herself, to find a center, like Charles had taught her before. It had been a long time since she had been overwhelmed like that, and she knew there would be no rest, not yet, until they were able to free themselves from whatever was going on. And right now, of the group that was there, she seemed to have the most telepathic power at the moment. She knew it would be needed, and she was no good as a nervous wreck.

Haller kept a careful but unobtrusive eye on his teammate. Jean had already made her opinions of his concern known, so he didn't press, but he was also aware that she'd been shouldering the telepathic load for the team for almost a year now. It hadn't taken a fall into one of the mindscape's emotional wells to show it was wearing on her.

Briefly, the counselor turned his attention to Rachel. She, too, seemed to be preparing herself, although in her case there was more of a let's-get-this-over-with sense. That jadedness was an entirely different kind of depressing. Haller suppressed a sigh.

"Just let us know, Hope," he said.

Back in Meggan's mind, 14 and the team pressed forward. 14 herself was vaguely worried that the other group was starting to think 'Punching Holes' was starting to look more and more appealing. They should have been smart enough to not try it, but she was over here and they were over there, so it was hardly guaranteed.

14 clenched a fist. The general _everythingness_ of Meggan's mind, combined with how closely she had to stick to Emma, was starting to set her nerves on edge. Still, they just had to get to where the other group was. It was just over this... hill...

In front of the group, a large stretch of... _something_ brown stood out against the bright pastels of the world. It was shiny and smelled strongly of...

"...is... is that a lake of chocolate syrup?" she asked, momentarily caught completely flat-footed.

And of course, Hope and the others were right in the middle of it. Brilliant.

"Chocolate syrup, horse shit, whatever it is, who cares?" Every second they spent in this literal Loony Tunes hell eroded more and more of Quentin's already barely existing patience. He shouldered past 14 and continued down the path to the other group. "Keep moving. I want to get out of here already."

Something tickling in the back of her mind made Hope look up. "There they are!" She called out to the assorted psi's with her. "Are you ready, Rachel?"

"Here?" The redhead circled the empty space in front of Hope with a finger and, upon receiving confirmation, gestured for her companions to clear the space. She threw up another shield in front of them as a precautionary measure, blue streaking down her arms as she gathered power in fists by her side. A domed forcefield formed before her, rapidly gaining colour as more energy was channelled into it.

As the shield built, Rachel considered the bookshelf and wall that stood beyond the space Hope had pointed out with a frown. Metaphysical representations of a mindscape were not actually real. However, if this failed, the attack could damage Topaz's brain.

With a sigh and sudden jerk of her wrists, Rachel let the forcefield fly, its rounded shape morphing into a sharp point at the last moment before it caught mid-air and resisted its trajectory. Sensing that she only had a moment to act, the psi flung her arms out and _pulled_ the forcefield apart.

The resulting _rip_ was deafening.

And then the blinding sunlight poured in.

The protective shield around the others dissolved as Rachel peered through the tear between the mindscapes. What laid beyond the cool darkness of the library could be described as Candyland Heaven. Or Hell. Very pretty. But with a smell so cloyingly sweet, it was enough to make a person gag.

"We're on chocolate," she noted, grabbing David's forearm when he reached her and using him as a counter balance so that she could tap the sole of her boot on top of the sticky liquid. He jerked her back when the floorboards by the tear morphed into... gingerbread? "Why do I feel like this could fuel my nightmares for the next year? Whose trippy _brain_ would even-- Oh, look. It's Emma."

As the counselor took Rachel's weight he flowed his own power into her, reinforcing her hold on the breach. It was indeed Emma, looking uncharacteristically worn -- and Meggan, and Quentin, and the newcomers, the Cuckoos -- or one of them, and with a strangely immature astral form.

Haller pulled his attention away from the group to the task at hand. Like high and low pressure systems, the mindscapes were colliding: on Topaz's side the floorboards were twitching like a muscle in spasm as they rippled from wood to confection, while the chocolate flowing from Meggan's side was congealing into a sludge of rotting paper. Rachel's power kept the tear open, but the edges wavered like a heat-haze.

"Jean," he said, the word a question.

At the sound of her name, Jean glanced up, surveying the damage. She took a small step forward, then another, until she was right at the precipice where the two sides warred with one another. Reaching out, she felt the 'heat,' then pulled her hand away. It reminded her of an infection, foreign bodies combating one another, like a fever.

"It needs to be cauterized," she said quietly.

Drawing in a breath, Jean looked back to the opening, then lifted up her hand again. A faint spark glanced off her fingertips before the spark suddenly got brighter, like the end of a welding torch. This was really something she hadn't done before, at least not on the astral plane, and not with that much control over it, so she wasn't sure if it was going to work.

She put all of her focus into the idea of ignition, of heat, to burn off some of the ragged edges of the tear between the two minds. As she touched the edges they began to sizzle and pop, and the fluctuating areas soon stabilized to depict the "correct" groundwork depending on what side the viewer was on, save for the tear itself, which seemed to be made of light

Midway through, Jean soon began to waver, and the precise light flashed, catching fire, which momentarily engulfed her arm and quickly disappeared before she stumbled back, putting her hand to her head as she took in quick breaths.

"I...I'm sorry," she said, clenching her eyes shut. Steam rose from her skin where she had caught fire, somehow burning up the water that still lingered, though she didn't seem to notice.

"I just need a moment."

Emma made an irritated gesture at the tiny bluebirds who were clustered around her shoulders, their claws holding on to her clothes and doing their best to try and hold her up. They let go and Emma straightened up. "I managed to turn myself inside out trying to get out of here," she said. "But some parts of me are starting to feel a little better. Could you do with some assistance on the fine tuning?" she asked Jean. "So you aren't actively setting yourself on fire, at least?"

The sound of flapping made Jean open her eyes, just in time to catch sight of the small flock of bluebirds that had brought Emma closer to her. It threw her off for a moment, giving her a bewildered expression as she blinked a few times, her mouth slightly agape as she shook her head.

"I--No. This is the first time I've tried fire on the astral plane," she said with a tinge of embarrassment. "No real need for it before now...I guess it takes some finesse. I'd appreciate the help, thanks."

Emma nodded and reached into her powers, sighing with annoyance as they once again shrugged and raised their hands, letting her know that they were still recovering and weren't quite ready to help out as much as she wanted, sorry. Emma reached deeper and managed to scrape together enough tendrils to at least be able to reach out to Jean, but it wasn't as much as she really need. Looking around, she gave momentary thought to asking the Cuckoo for assistance, but decided against it - she really had spent enough time rubbing against that brain and that feeling was decidedly mutual.

"Quentin," she said. "I need a little more power to help Jean and you've got telepathy to spare. Would you mind if I borrowed a little? I suspect it would be best for all of us if we don't burn holes in Meggan's or Topaz's minds."

The dilettante telepath hated to admit how impressed he was by the expert administration of the psiscape. Under pain of torture, he might even confess to some envy. So, presented with the opportunity to assist the masters at work, Quentin found that for once he could not say no.

"Just give it back when you're done," he said, lowering the box forts that he called shields to let Emma and Jean draw on him for strength.

The combined focus of the other two telepaths was almost instantly noticeable, like taking a shot of caffeine or a veil being lifted. The two of them, if they weren't careful to shore up their mental shields, might notice some feedback from the link to the woman: residual waves of negative emotions that fluctuated between fear, anger, hate, pain, and disgust.

Jean turned her attention back to the doorway, and resumed her work. Carefully studying the edges, the resulting flame was much more controlled and white hot. Soon the doorway was completely finished, and stable enough be relatively safe.

"That should do it," she said, taking a step back to get a better look.

"It's hard to say what will happen to it once we get everything righted, but it should be repairable."  
She glanced back to Quentin and Emma.

"Thank you," she said.

Topaz tried to watch them work, but dizziness washed over her and she had to squeeze her eyes shut, reaching out for something to grab. When it became apparent that staying upright wasn't an option she lowered herself to the ground as gently as she could, pressing her forehead against her knees to ride out the spell and muttering, "I hate tonight."

14 did her best not to stare stupidly at the resulting bridge. "I hope everyone appreciates exactly how dangerous that was," she said dryly.

If one little thing had gone wrong, one of the minds could have completely collapsed in on itself (and with all of them still in it, even). The remaining mind, unprepared, would have been left trying to stretch itself to occupy the empty space. If it hadn't been shredded by the resulting pull, would likely have been swept away by the crushing sensory overload it'd experience that came from suddenly having a second set of everything.

She would know.

A small part of her was almost disappointed it hadn't happened. There was no guarantee that either one of the girls would have been strong enough to weather the resulting overload or everything that came with it... and it very well would have likely killed everyone that wouldn't have been able to escape the collapsing mind...

But if everything had gone perfectly, she wouldn't have been quite so alone anymore.

It was for the best it had all gone smoothly, she knew. Really, she did. It was just one dark little thought she was going to have to keep to herself.

Haller gave the girl a bland look before turning his attention to the more familiar, less caustic blonde. "How are you doing, Meggan?" he asked.

Meggan wasn’t collapsing, but it had been a little uncomfortable to watch the work being done for a minute there for her, too. She was okay, and the nauseous sensation had abated. She waved away a few blue and green dragonflies that seemed to be made of M&M’s as they made an appearance. Their wings clattered as they fluttered about noisily, and briefly tried to camp out in her hair, before getting out of the way.

She couldn’t lie to Haller when all this mess was stuck in her head. “Okay? Sort of? A bit, I think. Good as I can be in all this,” she offered. “Although, I’m honestly sort of wondering if things can really and truly please stop sending the weirdest dreams ever for everyone, when they want to get a foothold.” She didn’t want anybody else to get hurt, trying to sort her and Topaz’ problems out here. Meggan glanced in the direction of where a six-legged cow made of white chocolate and strawberries was, when it gave a loud moo from about twenty feet away, before she just shook her head and looked back. Still not as weird as the Pegasus.

"I agree," said Haller, dryly. He estimated at least half of those present had been subjected to some form of astral entrapment. It was so hard to keep track. Certainly himself and Rachel. Meggan, too. He wasn't certain but he thought this might actually be Quentin's _third_ such experience, and considering the boy had been in the mansion for a little less than a year that was depressing.

The counselor shook his head and turned his attention to Emma. "Hope and I found out some things," he said. "I'd like to get your input, if you don't mind."

"Of course," replied Emma, blandly. She looked around her and motioned to a place on Meggan's side of the bridge, where soft green grass grew and what appeared to be a teeny-tiny horse shivered adoringly at the fact she had even noticed it. "Perhaps it's best if we have our discussion on the sunny side of the street."

***

Other than the end of world, of course.">  
Once Haller had Emma aside he didn't mince words.

"Take a look into my mind," he said, and pushed his recent excursion with Hope to the forefront.

Emma looked dubiously at Heller, opening her mouth to remind him of her recent entrail-tastic adventure in shattering and the effect it had had on her psychic powers, but then shut it again and decided to actually try and read his mind. Somewhat surprisingly, her powers felt as if they had recovered somewhat, their buttressing by Celeste obviously giving them some recovery time. Emma wouldn't be able to do anything exciting, but reaching into an open and inviting mind that had placed the narrative it wanted her to read right at the front proved to be within her capacity.

Emma scanned the information Haller had gleaned from his time in Topaz's mindscape and then on his excursion with Hope's astral form. "Emotional debris," she said slowly. "Not all that surprising. I've seen something similar elsewhere, but it was much more limited in scope. This wreckage doesn't appear to be specific to any of us. Or anything." She raised an eyebrow, her voice low, so no-one but Haller could hear her. "Other than the end of world, of course."

Haller frowned at the implication. "The remains of other astral planes," he said, voice equally low. It made a degree of sense; not too long ago entire worlds had been lost, many shattered beyond recovery. Xorn had repaired the damage he could, but the result was a fragile patchwork of realities.

"Energy can't be created or destroyed, only changed," mused the younger man. "If something couldn't be folded into our world . . ."

“Then it’s wandering around, lonely as a cloud. Until it sees a host of empaths. I would imagine that affinity is very enticing to lost emotions. Particularly if it didn’t have to travel very far. Both Meggan and Topaz were at the beginning of this world. This infection may have been with them since then. Just slowly growing. Or accreting. More and more particles getting attracted to the initial attachment.” Emma frowned as she thought about the implications of what she was saying.

"Some kind of pull might explain why it's so hard to get out." Haller folded his arms, expression pensive. "Astral interference would also explain why Hope is able to travel. This infection, or parasite, whatever it is, though . . . it's constricting. The way the mindscapes flux back and forth -- it's like they're being crushed together. Or collapsed into one another."

"Which doesn't suggest good things for our two young empaths," replied Emma. "I don't think there's anything good for them likely to come out of having their minds forcibly joined together." She frowned slightly. "I don't think it's gone that far yet, though. We could break the overlay off Meggan's mindscape - it took some power and it damaged the mindscape beneath, but it wasn't like the... parasite had infiltrated to any great depth."

"I think it's the same for Topaz. She metabolizes the emotions she absorbs, but the emotion-sinks don't seem to affect her the same way it affects the rest of us. It's still superficial. But she also said she'd been feeling off for weeks, like it's been building for a while. Tonight they must have hit some kind of tipping point." Haller's mouth twitched. "Like whatever found them is full-term."

Emma gave a sudden, quite deep sigh as all the pieces of the puzzle fit together in her head. "It's a new Astral Plane," she said softly. "Or perhaps a hundred old ones trying to be born anew. Hope can only travel on the Astral Plane, and she's the only one that could make it outside the mindscapes and into this... nascent space it's making. I suspect that, if it completes itself, things won't go very well for all of us that are trapped inside it. As for Meggan and Topaz, I suspect they'd be... ended. Turned into the struts and joists holding the new Plane together." She looked up at Haller, her mouth quirking in the smallest smile. "I think we just lost Plans B, C and D. It's all going to have to be Plan A. We'll have to destroy this thing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> X-Project is an X-Men Movieverse/MCU RPG on Dreamwidth. It started in 2003, set right after the second X-Men movie, and from there took on a life of its own. Thirteen years later it’s become a universe all its own, and includes characters from all walks of Marvel life – no character is too small or too obscure for X-Project. We roleplay mainly through writing logs on email, as well as posts on Dreamwidth.
> 
> If you're interested, check out the below links!
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> 


	5. Purge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The psis lead the charge, but in the end it's the empaths who make the final stand.

There was no convenient way to spread nine people across two minds. With neither Meggan nor Topaz free to exit their own brains, they'd compromised on a split. Hope, Rachel, and the Cuckoo were stationed near Topaz in her dark, dripping library, while Jean, Quentin, and Haller stood under the sunshine in Meggan's chocolate lake. Emma, lead and supervisor, was stationed directly in the breach.

The counselor had been quiet as they took up their positions, but the moment they'd settled he was all business. He turned to his designated partners and said, simply, "Ready?"

Jean was momentarily distracted by the stark contrast between Meggan and Topaz's mind. Meggan's world was so cartoonish that it felt surreal. She almost preferred Topaz's library. Almost.

Turning back to Haller, she finally nodded, extending her hand.

"Yeah," she said. The idea of linking with Haller gave her a sense of unease, but she tried to keep things professional, as to not extend her feelings through link with Haller and Quentin. The sooner they got this done, the better.

Quentin couldn't agree more. He had suffered more than his fair share of Astral Plane shenanigans over the past year. Time to move on and find a new shtick. He just nodded and grunted, extending his own mind to the other two psis to link them all up.

The connection was instantaneous: a light presence that slipped into their minds as his fingers twinned their hands. It was a supportive link devoid of thoughts or emotions, barely more than a steadying hand on the back. Quiet, professional.

"Ready," Haller reported.

“Definitely ready here,” Meggan nodded. She was certainly ready for the candy-coated nightmare to stop. She wanted her mind to look the way it was supposed to, so anything they had to do she was okay with. Linking up was fine.

"Ready." Topaz wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as Meggan. She was absolutely ready for this to be over, but more invasion into her mind wasn't exactly welcome. Still, she'd do what she had to. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, preparing.

Haller nodded, and spared a glance towards his counterpart where she stood on the opposite side of the barrier -- probably looking more incongruously cherubic than she would have liked.

"Celeste?"

14 knew it was necessary, but it didn't mean she had to like it. Once she got over her initial reluctance, physically (mentally?) forcing herself past her own proclivities, the actual act was easy.

She'd kept feather-light touches on Meggan and Topaz' minds since they'd opened the bridge. She was hardly going to trust her own life to someone else's work without verifying, after all. Now, she took a stronger hold and brought the two of them together with her.

A quick thought, and it was done. It was just light enough to secure them all. The mental equivalent of holding something as far away from your body as possible between two fingers.

"We're ready," she said quietly.

While her more telepathically inclined companions did their thing, Rachel hung back with Hope, close enough that they could still see through the breach, but far enough that they were not in the way. The redhead kept one eye on the operations but spared the time to eyeball a black chunk of fungus creeping across a high shelf. Once they had noticed the infection, it was hard to ignore…dark-colored smudges visible from the corner of the eye, only to vanish when one tried to focus on them. Here, in Topaz's mind, the hues were dark and easily lost in the shadows. On Meggan's side the something like an oil-slick rainbow bounced off the liquid chocolate.

Rachel blanched, a semi-translucent shield shimmering into existence above her as an insurance policy. It stretched to cover Hope and Topaz, but did not far enough to impede Emma. Arms crossed, she subtly angled herself in front of Hope, taking to heart that the girl was likely the most vulnerable of the lot at the moment.

Hope didn't notice the shield. She was too deeply entranced in the state of mind that allowed her the aura vision. Now that she had seen it from above... she could recognize the blobs of colored emotions, covered in black speckles... miniature versions of what she had seen earlier. And she had seen them even before that... she was just unable to recognize them.

Haller looked to Emma in the breach, backlit by the reassuring glow of Rachel's shield. The bluebirds still circled their mistress, but in the rift between minds their wings had somehow become pages, their beaks ribbon book-markers. Behind her he could see bookshelves beginning to sprout flowering branches. The longer the bridge was open the more cross-contamination occurred. It was nothing that couldn't be repaired -- as long as they could prevent the infection from finishing the job.

He met the woman's eyes and gave her a nod. The rest of them were set. Now it was up to her.

Emma nodded back at Haller and allowed herself a moment of testing her control over her powers, a feather light dance in her own mind. The effects of the diamond backlash were nearly gone now: between leaching off the oh-so-familiar energy of the Cuckoo and then sharing some of Quentin's power, it seemed that her mind was nearly back to normal now.

"Lucky that," Emma murmured to herself and reached out with a scalpel-blade of thought, sliding it under the edges of the psychic debris that she could see now, like a film over the candy-coloured landscape she'd grown used to. As she sliced and cut, severing stringy connectors that clung to the underlying mindscape, she reached out to the other side, creating another scalpel-blade, slipping it across the edges of books and peeling back the debris as carefully as she could, trying to leave not a skerrick of debris attached to the girls' mindscapes.

The debris fought back. That was the only descriptor Emma could use as she severed connecting tendrils that clung and then reached back again, trying to reattach to the underlying mindscape. Emma made a small noise as her concentration sharpened, using her power to soothe and smooth the areas she had managed to detach the debris from, a crude beginning of healing that should allow fewer sites for the infection to gain a foothold.

Concentrate. Tendrils, one by one. Soothe and smooth. Re-cut the reaching edges before they could reattach, so the shortened and shortened until she could be sure that they were dead. Finally, Emma reached the edge of the piece in Meggan's mind, the last few section that clung. With a quick sweep, she severed its remaining connection and then flung the piece of psychic debris away.

"Incoming," she said as the strange, fungal-looking mass flew through the air, quickly followed by a second as she worked the piece in Topaz's mind free seconds later. She didn't even take the time to look what was happening. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see the pieces of debris everywhere throughout both mindscapes and Emma set at the next infection sites with a will and considerably more speed.

If it was a rush when Quentin first manifested and touched the overwhelming collective power that was the Astral Plane, he was tripping now, linked tightly with some of the most powerful psis on the planet. If he were wielding this power alone, then he knew that he would have been caught under the current. But bolstered by Jean and more so by Haller, Quentin stayed afloat.

One of the freed chunks of psychic mildew floated like a leaf caught in the breeze, and Quentin raised a hand to it. He clenched his fist, and the glob exploded in a cloud of pink fire.

"Huh. Neat."

The particles resembled something like looking under a microscope, and Jean took only a moment to notice with a bit of light fascination before her intrinsic desire to burn the hell out of it so they would be able to leave kicked in. She gently gathered up some of the pieces to make a bigger one using her telekinesis, but not too big, as to become a problem.

Once satisfied, she turned her fingers with a simple flick of the wrist and it soon burst into flames. Using the burning debris, Jean shifted it over to another bit to use it as kindling, like a candle lighting another candle, and soon switched back to setting the fire herself. There was something oddly...exciting about it.

The flares of fire coming from the debris almost looked like fireflies in the sky. Pretty, until one remembered what they were.

As the quasi-opaque debris broke and withered above him Haller said nothing, concentrating on pushing his stunted power into the other two. His only interference was the odd adjustment to maximize efficiency and refine control, like a golf pro gently adjusting a beginner's stance.

14 immediately went to work. As everyone else was busy wrecking everything in sight, 14 took over repairs. Mental collapse was a real threat here, and she had to be on her game.

She hated it. She'd already been forced to get closer to not one but _three_ different people than she ever had in the past, leaving her dangerously vulnerable. Now, she was tasked with something even more impossible. 

Whatever this thing was, it was digging its way into both minds simultaneously. Fissures were beginning to split the ground all around them. Repairing them while maintaining the other links would take every bit of focus she had to give. It would leave her effectively defenseless, relying on the others to keep her safe. Could she even trust them to that extent?

Did she have a choice?

She forced to sound of combat to fall away. There couldn't afford to be anything but herself and her job. From her feet, inky shadows began to reach out towards the nearest fissure. They skimmed along the ground, a dark cloud of her psychic powers reflected on the astral level. They covered the closest crack, obscuring it in darkness.

A moment later, they moved on towards another, leaving unblemished ground behind them.

The debris was getting thicker as more and more of the parasite was flensed away under Emma's mind. Haller had been prepared to feed calm to the other two, but neither needed it. He would have liked to credit the control he was providing, but more probably it was the coordination. They were nine. Nothing could stop all of them together.

Then something landed on his back, cold and shapeless but somehow sharp, biting into his flesh, into his heart --

Convulsing, Haller tore his hands from Jean and Quentin's and fell back. The connection was broken.

It was like a slap. No, a sucker punch, when Jean felt the connection become ripped away and she found herself and Quentin to be alone.

Had it been another time, had she been wide awake and bright eyed and not worn down and tossed around like someone who had been at war with the sea, she might have been fine. She might have been able to take over, to figure it out on her own.

But as it stood it was as if gunpowder had been added to flame.

The sudden severing had momentarily sent Haller's reaction through the link before it was abruptly cut off, making the control Jean had managed to scrape up become nonexistent from the shock. She had tried to keep up her walls but it was the unfortunate cruelty of empathy, and of a defense against walls that were already shaken.

Letting out a gasp, the fire around her, once precise, soon flared into an inferno, pushing outward, though she managed to sever her link with Quentin before it did. What was once a halo, a shield, was wrapped around her like a cloak, setting her ablaze.

"No...No..." she whispered, closing her eyes, but the fire refused to obey, sending out swaths of flames that burned every bit of fungal debris---or anyone--in its path.

"GET BACK!"

As wild flame roared across the adjacent mindscape holes began to appear in Rachel's shield. The semi-organic mass seethed against the surface with the activity of frenzied maggots, and pits began to appear in the dome. Sections sagged like wet cardboard.

Drawn by power yet unable to reattach to its original hosts, the infection was congregating over the psis. Scant feet away from Hope the area directly above 14 was darkening, thinning like rust-eaten iron -- giving way.

Hope could only watch, enthralled by the various blobs and shifting colors. She stayed in her aura sight, since that gave her the clearest picture... a picture the others had trouble seeing. Like what she was seeing now... a blob, shifting in a sickly green and blue pattern, covered in black streaks was dropping towards the little Emma lookalike. Who was obviously doing something that could not easily be stopped.

She didn't hesitate. Diving around the shield Rachel had formed, she floated up, hovering between the girl and the blob that was moving towards her quickly. Yet she did not move, shielding her. Only a few seconds later the blob made contact and Hope let out a mental yell.

"Oh, balls," Rachel swore under her breath, power thrumming through her veins as she reinforced the existing shield and extended it over Emma's head, simultaneously forming another beneath it and _slamming_ the two together. There was a squelching sound, the bits of disease between the two shields obliterating from the force. Other parasites in the vicinity jerked, as though momentarily stunned by the shockwave. Then resumed their attack, eating through the energy with frightening speed.

A blue sphere snapped into existence around Hope, snatching her from above Emma, the space above the blonde quickly filled by the presence of a thicker, diamond-like shield. She landed the injured girl next to Topaz, not liking the way the black blob seemed to be... consuming her astral form. "Topaz. Look after her," the redhead ordered, unable to spare more attention for the pair as she refocused her attentions, rapidly building shield after shield to keep the ugly tar-like shapes at bay.

Topaz knelt down with Hope, instinctively shoving down the panic as she examined the blob. What the hell was she supposed to do? Grabbing it and trying to pull it off her probably wasn't going to do any good but she tried anyways - and was surprised when it shimmered and started to dissolve under her hand. She jerked back, surprised, and nearly missed the sudden flash of panic and sadness and fear in her mind.

_What...oh._

Realization settling in, she put her hand pack on the blob, shivering only slightly as it dissolved and the pure emotion it was made of became part of her.

Hope suddenly seem to relax a little, but the part of her body that had been covered by the blob, now seemed to be covered in something that seemed like road rash. "That hurts..." She muttered as Hope opened her eyes and tentatively moved a little.

"Can't help that," Topaz mumbled, shaking her head and trying to see past the sudden onslaught of emotions in her spinning head. "Just try to relax."

 

The string of curses that Quentin let out in response to the sudden conflagration was lost in the roar of the fire. He fell down hard onto his ass and scooted back several inches to get away from Jean. "The fuck happened? You, Hair Boy! Why'd you . . ." He turned to Haller to demand an explanation, but it was clear had happened. One of the freed parasites had escaped the psychic annihilation wave and latched onto him. It was draining him, corrupting him. What could they do to save him? And more importantly, save themselves. "Oh God fucking dammit, you stupid bitch."

With their focus on offense interrupted it was now clear the protective shield had been compromised. The debris that seethed like bees against the dome were corroding it, eating through it. They were under assault.

Despite it Emma still stood in the eye of the storm, still tearing, still fighting, untouchable -- and anything that came near Jean blackened into ash. The rest of them weren't so lucky. Even as Quentin watched another half-visible glob hit the ground just feet away and began to crawl towards the psis, the dome above them dripping with more. Haller twisted on the ground, face streaming blood and completely defenseless.

Meggan had jumped in surprise when the fire had gone out of hand, and everything seemed to be failing. She had an idea, though, in spite of her fear, and hoped it would work. Meggan had been able to disperse portions of the molasses river earlier. Filter out the infected bits. She reasoned that perhaps she could help Haller, in a similar way and dove to kneel at his side. She moved to wrap her arms around him, to help him fend off the parasite as best as she was able to. She couldn't tell at her angle, but was it smaller now than when she’d started?

Somewhere through the choking emptiness Haller registered arms around him -- her embrace was like a psychic windbreak. The warmth shocked him into something approaching sensibility. He found the presence of mind to reach back and grab at the thing on his back, but he was weak, and when he pulled at it he felt the tug of barbs in his skin.

The parasite squirmed and sucked at his fingers, but Meggan's influence prevented it from attaching. It couldn't seem to gain further purchase.

Meggan briefly wondered if she needed to wrap her legs around Haller, too, or if arms were good enough. They had to be good enough, because she could feel him reaching back now.

She was hesitant to even attempt to tear the thing off, for fear she would do more damage to Haller. It might cling harder to him, and become twice as painful. Or it might even split off. But what if they worked before when it purged things, even temporarily? “Quentin! Aim right here, at this one spot like before,” she shouted over to him. Her arms were busy, wrapped around Haller as they were, but she could still nod her head in the general direction she meant.

“You might want to stay very, very still, if you’re able to, Sir,” was the quiet advice Meggan whispered in Haller’s ear.

"Aim?" Quentin repeated incredulously, as if Meggan were turning into one of these monsters herself. Subtlety and accuracy were not his strong points. He would need to develop bullet-like precision to . . .

A wicked grin grew as the thought came to him. He pulled himself to his feet and held out his hands as wispy pink energy coalesced around them. "She's right. Do me favor and don't move a muscle. I got this." The cloud of psychic power took form in his hands, a long solid rod connected to a flat plate at one end. When he raised it, holding the butt firmly against his shoulder, it was a glowing pink shotgun. Quentin pulled the same trick on Jean all those months ago, but this time instead of loading it with a flag that would unfurl where fired, he'd created concentrated pellets of psychic energy. "Seriously, don't move. I've never actually used one of these before in real life."

Quentin wasn't expecting his fake psychic shotgun to make such a loud BANG when he fired it and he hoped he hadn't given himself tinnitus, but he brushed aside those personal concerns for once. The focused totality of his telepathy blasted through the parasite, which exploded in a fine mist of ectoplasm.

Haller felt the impact, but not pain -- perhaps from shock, or perhaps some side-effect of Meggan's hold on him. Every straining muscle went limp at once as the psychic invasion abruptly vanished. He sagged against the blonde like an unstrung puppet.

Meggan was thrilled that it had worked, and nodded her thanks to Quentin. There had been a mild tingling sensation that passed through her, from hanging on she guessed. When Haller sagged, she very carefully lowered him back to the ground. She didn’t need to cling to him now that it was off, but she stayed close just in case another tried to get him while he was down.

Quentin's words stung and borrowed their way into Jean's mind, reminding her of how out of control she felt and how badly she had failed as a teacher and an X-Man and only fueled the fire. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes but they turned to steam the moment they rolled down her cheeks as she struggled to get the fire to stop. To keep her distance, she tried to get farther away from the others, but she wasn't sure where to go.

"Please stop please stop please stop...." she whispered under her breath.

"Jean."

 

Haller was at the edge of her aura, already back on his feet. He'd only realized he'd pushed Meggan aside to do so once it had already been done. His head was still disordered, and the power and stress spilling from Jean had triggered something instinctual.

"Jean, it's okay. Take my hand." Hand extended, Haller started forwards.

Haller's voice made Jean jump, and she lurched away, sensing his presence as he came near her.

"No...NO! I'll burn you. I messed up...I keep messing up. I don't know what to do! I can't....make it stop."

Haller stepped into the flame. The colorless wash of his own shield glowed against the crimson, the focused effort easily repelling Jean's wild energy. Gently, he reached out and took Jean's arm. He met her eyes, his gaze clear and blue through the blood.

"You won't hurt me," he said, so low only she could hear him. "And now we're going to make it stop."

As he spoke calm flowed through their contact: acknowledgement of her fear, but equal belief it was surmountable. An understanding of the stresses she'd been dealing with, and how hard and fast she'd been pushed as both an X-Man and as an individual. And, above it all, the certainty that she hadn't failed -- she had been let down.

Jean took in a quick breath, and she slowly uncovered her face, meeting his eyes, her own still blinded by tears. For a few brief moments it almost felt like she were looking through him. Because there was something underneath. Pain, grief, and guilt he had been hiding from himself until the parasite had broken him open to show what was inside.

Staring at him wordlessly, she kept her attention on him as the fire seemed to dissipate as if a candle being blown out by a gust of wind.

"I don't think that," she said faintly.

Haller gave her a blank look, and in that instant it was clear he hadn't realized how much of himself he had revealed.

Like a leech sucking blood, the parasite had forced the buried to the surface. Steeling himself, Haller gathered up all the pain and ugliness, pressed it back into the hole that was his heart, and returned Jean's gaze.

"We'll get through this," he promised her, and turned to stretch out his other hand to the youngest psi. "Quentin."

For a moment, Quentin thought he would be better off without anyone. His faux Remington curved and shortened into a Godfather-inspired Lupara that was sure to annihilate the parasites swarming around them. What "help" did he really need from other psis who could barely keep it together any better than he could?

Or maybe they needed _him_. He'd been the one to discover they were walking inside a disease, Emma had asked for his help to bring together and stabilize the two minds, and now here he was, cleaning up the mess. So he shifted his gun to his dominant left hand and took Haller's with his right, opening up the flow of psychic power again so these chumps could do something right.

The link reformed instantly, and with it the boost in power. As Jean and Quentin resumed their assault, Haller caught Meggan's eye and gave the blonde a small nod.

Meggan wasn’t bothered by the earlier push. She understood things were hectic and the link had to be fixed on all parts. She nodded back, ready to watch for any other portions of parasite to fling themselves at the trio.

14 wasn't dead. She considered that a win, all things considered. Repairing minds was easy for her. It was almost like she was bringing back repressed memories, but different. The difficulty came from all the damage that had been done. Both minds were a mess, and she was patching as fast as she could while making sure she didn't accidentally patch the two minds together permanently. That would have been bad.

She'd been forced to split her focus three ways just to keep up with the damage, clouds of shadow weaving their way across the battlefield. She was just able to keep up with how fast everything was falling apart. Still, she couldn't keep this up forever. If something didn't change, she'd be overwhelmed soon.

Something changed. 14 felt the shift somewhere deep in the layers of mind she was working in as some unknown threshold was hit. Fissures began to seal themselves before she even reached them. Both minds had apparently decided they wanted to live, and they were going to make it happen. 14 smiled. She did good work.

Still, she wasn't done. There were a few fissures that would need her attention. Collapsing her shadows back into a single mass, she got back to work.

Emma gave a small sigh of relief as her life became a tiny bit easier. Instead of having to scrape away each parasite piece and make the barest efforts to start a repair process on the mindscapes beneath, suddenly the mindscapes began to repair themselves. Simpler. Easier. Her only half-healed powers thanked her as they strained beneath the effort she was exerting to flense away the parasite. Her focus sharpened and she cut harder, faster, spinning chunks of debris away ever more quickly.

The build up _had_ been happening naturally, and Topaz had been in control of it. More or less. A little bit on the side of less but she could handle it as long as she was the one controlling what came in.

Unfortunately that was very suddenly no longer the case. The emotions _flooded_ through her mind and she gasped, the sudden influx driving her to her knees. It was a _lot_. Too much. _Fearsadnesshateangerpanicfearpanichatesadness..._ over and over through her head, too much, too much, _TOO MUCH_...

"Damn it," Topaz bit out, half whimpering, as her left hand closed around her right wrist and she dug her nails into the skin, trying desperately to keep herself focused on what was going on _outside_ of her head. She really didn't have time for a breakdown.

Meggan began to feel a portion of the influx of feelings, and hoped to take away some of the strain. It was a lot. It was more than she’d expected, but halved the other girl’s in some strange way. She was like a coffee filter for the grounds of panic and sadness and fear that would otherwise overwhelm Topaz.

There were also good feelings floating through the waves from her half, and she closed her eyes to help focus on separating everything.

Some of the pressure on Topaz's mind eased, at least allowing her to breathe for a minute and push herself back up. She could still feel _everything_ \- all the emotions from the parasite, all the power that came with absorbing it...

_Focus. Come on._

She shook her head, taking a deep breath. Focus. Right.

In the back of her mind, Meggan half wondered how bad the freak out would be when Amanda heard about this. The thought was immediately chased away by the sheer amount of emotion and power flooding through before it began to stabilize. She concentrated on what was in front of her. All of the ridiculously happy things augmented by the parasite were now transforming into a normal flood of pleasant feelings and joy as they flowed through her and not impossible levels of wrong.

_Just concentrate._

Behind Topaz, the puddles trying to consume the library - the parasite's one last attempt at winning, it seemed - began to slowly evaporate. Energy crackled between Topaz's fingers and she spared one brief moment of thought to wonder what would happen if she used magic here, inside her own mind, with all this energy-

She shoved it down quickly, forcing the magic back under control and re-focusing. Now wasn't the time for that.

For one instant, Meggan thought the remains of the parasite’s influence would cause molasses to flood out of the river and consume everything. In the next, it stopped, and receded. The cartoon aura flecked off the animals like eggshell. Beneath, they were normal forest animals. The unicorn was just a stag beneath, to Meggan’s fleeting disappointment, and the teeniest feeling of guilt that should not even exist.

_Sorry, Emma. At least the little guy’s not dust._

The Pegasus morphed into a bird. Meggan focused on cleaning up the mess, now that she could. Molasses dried to an odd brown stain. A moment later, that, too, was absorbed into the green of the grass. The leaves returned to their natural colors. So did the trees, as the sap disappeared. Honey on the shrubs morphed into the beginnings of flowers.

In Topaz's mind the water evaporated into air, the bookshelves and chairs and tables picking themselves up like something out of a demented Disney movie, righting themselves at last, and lights flickered overhead, even threatening to turn on.

_Maybe it's not just a sad dark place after all._

That thought gave Topaz a little bit of hope.

The creature which Meggan had mentally dubbed Anime Martian Bambi stopped looking like it belonged in the most warped of Disney movies, and changed into a regular deer. It promptly wandered back into the forest. The licorice was purged from the last of the grass, and the overpowering smell of it was gone.

A chocolate filled path that had sprinkles on top became a regular dirt path again. It looked like a regular piece of nature again, and Meggan felt relief creep in. The water flowed clean and clear in ponds and streams and even little puddles near where Quentin had climbed out of the former taint of molasses.

Topaz dug her fingernails back into skin, trying to focus on what was happening. The lights finally flickered on over head...

And then the ground started to shake, hard enough that Topaz dropped to her knees again instead of risking falling over once more. _What the **hell**_?

Everything that wasn’t already fixed was righted in one fell swoop. Meggan caught herself on the branch of a nearby tree as she stumbled, surprised by the sudden movement of the ground. _That couldn’t be a real earthquake, could it? Here?_

Topaz's head snapped up to look around, and she realized something that was both wonderful and - strangely - a little offsetting. She was alone in her mind. Completely alone.

_What-?_

Before she could question it any further, her vision whited out.

Everyone on Meggan’s side was gone, presumably thrown out. She only had enough time to hope they were okay, before she realized that she couldn’t feel Topaz anymore. As she looked around, everything before her turned into a haze of white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> X-Project is an X-Men Movieverse/MCU RPG on Dreamwidth. It started in 2003, set right after the second X-Men movie, and from there took on a life of its own. Thirteen years later it’s become a universe all its own, and includes characters from all walks of Marvel life – no character is too small or too obscure for X-Project. We roleplay mainly through writing logs on email, as well as posts on Dreamwidth.
> 
> If you're interested, check out the below links!
> 
>   
> [Welcome to X-Project](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Welcome_To_X-Project) | [Application](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application) | [Available Characters](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Unplayed_Characters) | [Game Wiki](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) | [Read The Game](http://xp-friends.dreamwidth.org/read) | [FAQ](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=FAQ) | [Contact Us](mailto:x_moderators@googlegroups.com) | [Follow Us on Twitter!](http://twitter.com/#!/xprojectrpg) | [Rules](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Policy) | [Tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/blog/xprojectrpg) | [Application Checklist](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application_Checklist)  
> 


	6. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream. Or at least that's what we'll be telling ourselves from now on.

**Meggan, Topaz, and Hope**

Meggan finally opened her eyes, and quickly checked around the room. Everything was normal in her brain, everything was normal outside, she was really awake this time, and Candyland Hell was no longer a thing. There were no bluebirds worshiping Emma Forst. There was no Martian Bambi stalking Meggan through licorice grass. This was great. This was much saner. She was grateful there weren’t lingering dripping emanations of some kind from the thing, like never being able to be anything but chipper and nothing else until the end of her day.

Or her head exploding, she realized a moment later, because there wouldn’t _be_ a chipper to the end of her days kind of scenario if the parasite had won. That was the main thing to be thankful that all the psychics helped them avoid. She sat up, and then wondered if Topaz was okay. Topaz got the darker half. Meggan’s had been strange, so she could only imagine the mess that came from something worse. So she might have gotten something worse than she did. She swiftly got out of bed, gently closed the door behind her, and made her way through the halls.

She had a mild feeling of a sort of hangover, but it wasn’t enough to leave her stuck in bed. It could be the lateness of the hour, mixed with everything else. Aspirin might be welcome later.

She stopped outside the door, but didn’t want to knock. “Topaz,” Meggan whispered. Just loud enough to be heard, but not so loud that it would wake anyone else up that wasn’t already awake. “Are you up?”

Topaz's eyes snapped open - and immediately snapped shut again as her head pulsed angrily. She should have expected a headache from hell after everything that had happened, but there was no way to prepare one's self for this kind of pain.

She rolled over with a groan, pressing her face into the pillow and mumbling, "God I hate this place."

A knock at the door disrupted her plan to Never Get Out Of Bed Again, and for a moment she seriously considered just ignoring it. But the quiet voice was Meggan's, and she wouldn't feel right ignoring that. So instead she stumbled blindly out of bed, refusing to turn on any lights for her journey to the door. She squinted against the hallway lights as she opened the door, muttering, "Come in, come in," in a thickly accented voice.

Meggan hurried in, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. She understood. She would try to avoid running into anything sharp, if it were at all possible. “It all almost feels like a hangover, or like you’ve been awake for many, many days longer than you should have, doesn’t it?” she said in a hushed voice. She didn’t want to hurt Topaz’ head more than it already was.

"Bit like both at the same time, honestly," Topaz mumbled. She'd been hungover. She'd had severe sleep deprivation. Neither of them alone were this bad. "You alright? Sounds like you lot had a bit of a rough time."

“I think so? Mostly. I was about to ask you that,” Meggan admitted. “Since I thought your side probably had the darker half, before all the fighting to get it out at the end.” As she’d said during everything, she just really wished bad things would stop funneling dreams into people. “Something worse than M&M dragonflies, six legged white chocolate strawberry cows, and a molasses river and sludge that just felt…off.” Even before anyone had fallen in, it had been unnerving.

"It wasn't too bad." Well it hadn't been for Topaz, at least. But considering the position she'd found Haller, Dr. Grey, and Rachel in, she had a feeling it'd been rough for them. She rubbed her temples, sucking in a deep breath. "Just a library with puddles." Downplay, downplay, downplay. Always downplay.

“And were the puddles filled with anything off, like my river? Did the books melt or bite?” If one side had something wrong, maybe the other did, too. Meggan wondered if the puddles would make people angry or sad. She was going on the logic that everything was the exact opposite of hers.

"Just water," Topaz murmured. "The books were just...memories." She closed her eyes at that, letting her shoulders fall. "Guess the others had it pretty good on my side all things considered."

“Bad memories?” Meggan really didn’t want to pry or upset her, but if something had stirred up bad things, it couldn’t be helped. If there was an area of memories in physical form on her side, she had probably just missed it. At the last comment, she didn’t think that anybody that was dragged into another’s brain had things that good.

"Bit of both from what I saw. I didn't ask what the others saw." She wanted to know what they saw - but at the same time she didn't. She couldn't shake off the slight feeling of violation. But it couldn't be helped now. She shook her head, taking a deep breath. The pain seemed to have ease a bit. "What about you? What happened?" She wanted to get the subject off herself.

Meggan wanted to ask, but at the same time wasn’t certain. “At first, there was perkiness, but it was heightened so much that everything over there was Candyland. And cartoons of animals. I kept running into things that just felt _wrong_. Like a big sign saying ‘do not touch.’ I _want_ to say it was Candyland Hell, but I don’t know if that’s really right.” She tried to put it into words, but it was just so surreal. “Miss Frost was worshiped by the unicorn and bluebirds after she hurt herself trying to get out. The squirrels hated Quentin, even before he fell in the river, and had a—a temporary attack of perkiness.”

In Meggan’s opinion, there was perky, and then there was ‘Good God, what is that horror decked out like Mickey Mouse with angel wings and flowers sprouting from his face, while bouncing on the trampoline made of cotton candy.’ She was pretty sure the parasite had buried the needle on registering the latter in the whole situation. Well, _before_ the extraction had begun. “Where I touched the molasses, it became water, though.” She paused. “What happened with you?”

"Even manifestations of a mind warped by a parasite don't like Quire," Topaz murmured dryly, rubbing the back of her head. "I...woke up in this caged area. Like you know, a special section in a library. It looked like a hurricane had gone through or somethin', water was drippin' from nowhere and there were puddles and..." She drifted off for a moment, remembering opening the books and seeing the memories of Alice and Luca...

She shook her head, trying to shake it all off. "I don't know. Somethin' happened when the others stepped in the puddles, I didn't ask though. They were pretty shaken up when I found them all."

“Oh. Sorry. I…don’t think there were more cages anywhere in mine,” Meggan whispered with worry for Topaz. Meggan was surprised, but if the parasite wanted to attempt to lull her with pleasant things, a lack of cages would be the way to go. “Mine was endless grassy meadows, before you hit the forest dripping with happy causing goo. The grass was licorice. Part of the forest might have been gingerbread under that stuff.” She wondered what happened with the others in the library, too, but if Topaz didn’t know, then she didn’t want to speculate.

She wanted to hug her--a normal, non-parasite possessed, non-overwhelming joy hug--but wasn’t sure Topaz would accept when both their heads were throbbing.

"Sounds like it could've been pleasant. Ya know, if not for the parasite makin' everythin' weird and dangerous." Topaz wondered if the library in her mind was _ever_ pleasant. The water was probably because of the parasite, but was it always so dark and empty and lonely?

The thought was a bit depressing.

Topaz shook the thought off again, eyeing Meggan for a moment. The desire for normal, physical contact was rolling off of her pretty heavily, and after a moment Topaz held her arms out uncertainly - an offer.

“The whole time, I was scared that at some point I would look up…and the sun baby from Teletubbies would be looking back at me and giggling,” Meggan admitted after a moment's hesitation. It sounded weird, but given what she’d seen with the woodland creatures, that was always a distinct possibility. “Maybe without that niggling little confusion at whether or not I was possessed due to how strange it all was, yeah? Maybe? If there wasn’t stuff contaminating everything. And except for Anime Martian Bambi with the sad but adorable eyes.”

With a small smile that was probably lost in the darkness of the room, Meggan accepted the offer and moved to lean in.

Topaz wasn't really giving one for hugs, but she figured Meggan wouldn't mind if she was a little awkward and horrible about it. She needed this too, even if she wouldn't admit it to anyone. The whole experience had shaken her up something fierce.

"It's over," she said quietly after a moment, sighing lightly. The pain in her head eased a bit more. Thank god.

“And our heads didn’t explode like a popped balloon,” Meggan whispered with relief. That had been one scary possibility. It was worse than someone walking off with either of their bodies. The headache didn’t throb as much right now. She leaned closer and shifted over, so she wouldn’t be at an almost painful angle.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch." Hope muttered as she stumbled inside and caught sight of the other two young women. "Please tell me you also have the marching band going on inside your head?"

Topaz pulled away, smiling a bit blandly. "Hang on, I have aspirin," she said, heading for the bathroom.

“The marching band decided to bring too many cymbals and drums to the party, and not enough flutes,” Meggan agreed with a wince as she let go. That analogy didn’t completely make sense, but it was good enough. “Aspirin for everybody. Hope, you were next on my disorganized and throbbing mental checklist. You’re not hurt more than the headache?” She had worried.

"Stiff as hell and kinda dizzy, but okay." Hope replied shortly "Have we heard from any of the others we saw. Ms. Frost, Dr. Grey or Mr. Haller?" She sank into a chair, cradling her head.

“Not yet,” Meggan replied with a careful shake of her head. She was glad there wasn’t more than that for Hope. “We probably need to check in with everybody before we all fall over.” She wanted to see how they were physically...especially after the parasite had fought back.

Topaz returned with a nearly empty bottle of aspirin, staring at it blearily. "I just bought this," she grumbled as she dealt out the last of the pills to the other women. The recent spell of headaches and migraines suddenly made sense. Stupid parasite.

“I was having a no longer so mysterious perky attack that almost won against the parasite induced headaches earlier. Almost,” Meggan said as she gratefully took the offered pill. So she knew what Topaz must have felt. She thought for a second. The parasite _would_ explain the strange need—which she had barely resisted—just prior to everything to go out and kidnap all the puppies and cuddle them forever and ever.

"Thanks Topaz." Hope said as she accepted the pill. "I wonder though... maybe we should head downstairs first... the docs might want to check us over before we start taking medication?"

“Or before we sleep,” Meggan quietly agreed after a second of looking at the aspirin. Would it hurt them after just getting out of one mess? Was there protocol for aspirin post infestations? It was confusing. She had never been infested before, just possessed. She wasn’t sure, and thought Hope was right. “So…I guess stick them in a pocket until we’re all cleared?”

Topaz weighed her options for a moment before popping the pills back and muttering, "I'll take my chances. Should we go now?"

"The sooner we get cleared, the sooner we can take something. I say we go now." Hope stood up slowly and started making her way to the door. "Hopefully the others will be there as well. One of you have your phones? We can send a ping we are coming..."

Topaz looked blearily back at her door and shuffled off to get her phone. She really just wanted to go back to bed.

“Mine’s back in the bedroom, I think,” Meggan realized. She hadn’t thought to grab it on the way out. She could pick it up later.

*

**Jean, Laurie and Doug**

Working in an ER, you got used to the sound of an ambulance speeding its way into the hospital, its sirens blaring, wailing for attention, signaling to either get out of the way or come and help. But usually they weren't screaming in your ears.

Or at least, that was what Jean had thought when she heard the sound. She had already started to stir a little by the flash of light in front of her eyes, giving the illusion of morning, the events in Topaz and Meggan's mind having just passed, but still groggy and disoriented from sleep.

But something felt warm, too warm. Something smelled like smoke. And suddenly...it didn't feel warm at all as a faint hiss was heard over the alarms, sending out a stream of water from the sprinklers overhead.

Naturally, Jean screamed, and became tangled in the covers as she scrambled to climb out of bed, falling off with a heavy thud.

The shrilling of the fire alarm in Jean's room was loud enough to be heard in the bed that Doug and Laurie shared, even if their own alarm and sprinklers hadn't gone off. (With the number of fire-related powers and potential for mishap, having one room set off an entire wing's worth of alarms was a poor idea.) "The hell?" he murmured as he struggled toward full wakefulness, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes.

Laurie herself was already out of the bed and heading toward the door before her brain caught up with her movements, the perils of X-man training and Scott Summers making sure 'be up and in uniforms in under 5 minutes' was not just a goal but a reality.

"I think it's Jean's room," Laurie said, returning to pull Doug out of bed and over to the door. "We've got to make sure she's okay."

The urgency in Laurie's voice pulled Doug the rest of the way awake, and he had the presence of mind to snag one of his escrima sticks from near the door in case the noises and scream were the result of some kind of attack.

"Jean?" he called as they crossed the common area, coupled with a telepathic 'ping' directed at her room.

The only answer came from the shriek of the alarm.

Laurie took the door to Jean's room at a run, slamming it back as she took in salient details.

"Jean!?"

Stunned, Jean sat on the ground at the base of the bed. Reflex had been replaced by memory as everything that just happened came rushing back and she bore witness to the aftermath. Thick tendrils of smoke curled off of her, mingling with the spray of water. The blankets, sheets, and mattress showed evidence of light charring and billowed heavily with smoke as well.

Glancing up, she met Doug and Laurie’s gaze with a look like someone who had been caught playing with matches, except they were the match.

“Is…Is this real?”

It seemed like she would never stay dry.

"Well, I suppose we could get into a discussion on the nature of reality, and solipism and all that..." Doug joked, filling up the space with chatter as he crouched in front of Jean, a little more than an arm's reach away. "Do you know who you are?" he asked, one of the classic first questions to assess someone's mental state. His tone was calm and gentle without being patronizing or demeaning.

Jean blinked at him, thrown off by the question. “What?” she said, the bewilderment on her face not helping her answer.

“Um….Jean,” she added, brushing away wet strands of hair from her face.

“We…there was something…something…wrong on the astral plane. It’s fixed,” she said faintly, putting her hand to her temple.

“God, my head.”

Every pulse of the alarm was like someone turning a vise tighter around her skull.

Laurie had gone into Doctor mode as soon as she sighted Jean, and she now waved Doug away in order to get a better look at her eyes.

They seemed clear enough, if a little dazed but telepathic burn out was different to a physical ailment.

"Jean, I need you to come with me to the Medlab - do you think you can walk unassisted?"

Closing her eyes, Jean gave a non-committal cross between a shrug and a grunt.

"Maybe," she said as she peeled her way out of the covers and pulled herself up to her feet like a newborn colt. The sprinklers had finally turned off, and Jean glanced around. It was all ruined. She put her hand to her stomach, which was turning from everything that happened. She felt nauseated.

The motion as Jean stood made Doug belatedly realize that the sprinklers had soaked everything in the room - including Jean's sleep shirt. His eyes abruptly flicked away as he gave himself the mental equivalent of a thwap across the nose with a rolled up newspaper. ~Jeez, Ramsey, this is a small crisis, quit looking at her boobs and be helpful.~ He stood himself and looked around. "Do you want me to come with you two just in case?" he asked.

Jean blinked at Doug, quickly looking down and covering herself before realizing she'd heard that. She must have really been out of sorts if her usual defenses were off kilter.

"Sorry," she mumbled apologetically, then shook her head. "I'll be fine, but thanks."

She turned back to Laurie. "I think I should go to the Box when we're done," she said quietly.

"Of course," Laurie replied, and she placed a hand at the small of Jean's back - schooling her own thoughts to something soothing as she gave the other woman a small push. "Let's get you checked out and then I'll make sure you get to the box."

***

 

**Emma**

 

Emma normally woke quickly, but being ejected from Meggan's (or was it Topaz's?) mindscape made for a particularly abrupt transition from sleep to wakefulness. 

Before she had time to think about it (or for the headache to hit), she reached out and confirmed the right number of psis and sensitives were in their rooms and in varying states of confused wakefulness. A quick scan let her know they were unharmed by the night's adventures, at the superficially obvious level at least. 

Anything beyond superficially obvious could wait until morning, decided Emma. What couldn't wait was a truly ravenous sense of hunger that arose from using her powers for so long and so strenuously to remove the parasite. 

Too tired to reach out with her mind, Emma hit Daniel Humm's number on her speed dial. The chef's voice was tired when he responded, but brightened considerably at the sound of his favourite private client's murmured apology for calling him so late. 

"I need a feast," Emma purred at the Swiss chef. "You know what I like to eat. In twice the quantities I normally order." She stopped for a moment, a sudden memory of how many (so many) adoring eyes suddenly invading her memory. She thought for a moment and then sighed. "And Daniel, make it vegetarian, please."

***

**Fourteen**

 

In her rooms, all of 14 awoke with a start. Judging by the sounds coming from down the hall, everyone else was awake too. That had not been fun. 

Irma and Esme slipped out of their room and into that of their sisters. Esme specifically still felt like death warmed over, and there was nothing that couldn't be taken care of in the morning.

Now if she could just stop her hands from shaking.

***

**Quentin and Gabriel**

 

Everything fell apart, and Quentin felt himself falling down, as if he'd been pushed off a building. The wind rushed past his face and he flailed wildly, trying to slow himself down somehow. And then it stopped.

Quentin yelped and sat up in bed, fighting to catch his breath, his heart pounding loudly enough to be heard. The contaminated psiscapes were gone, he wasn't stuck in Topaz's house of horrors or Meggan's infantile cartoon world, and he wasn't sharing mind space with a dozen other psychics. For better or worse, he was back at Xavier's in his own room, alone save for the companion next to him under the covers.

The other body shot up at the yelp, scooting away from the scream. "What?" Gabriel stared at him, a little wide-eyed and confused. "Hey, hey," he shifted positions, casting the sheets aside in a split-second and grabbing Quentin's shoulders. "What's going on?"

"Nightmare," Quentin panted, reflexively leaning into the offer of comfort. He wiped his face with a trembling hand. "Something happened on the Astral Plane. These little psychic viruses or something. Grabbed all of the psis here. It was fucking Quebec all over again, except we were stuck between Topaz's and whatsherface's brain instead of some random body. What time is it?"

"Um..." Gabriel glanced around. "I dunno." Somewhat hesitantly, he released his grip on Quentin so he could reach over the younger man and grab his phone off the nearest nightstand. "2ish. 2 something." He looked back at Quentin, not bothering to hide the concern from his face. "Are you — I mean, shit, Q." He scooted back to his position on the bed but leaned up against the headboard. "Are you okay?"

It was still so early. Even though it felt like hours in the Astral Plane, barely any time had passed in the real world. That was a good thing, Quentin reasoned, certainly better than being in a coma for days while fighting to break free. Quentin fell back down onto his pillow, his breath steadying. "It's fine. I'll be fine. Frost and Jean and whatshisname, the guy with the hair, we all fixed most of it. It's just a shock to be back. Shit. It was just a bad fucking trip."

"Sounds like." Gabriel wasn't entirely sure what to say. But he knew that this last trip to the astral plane was hardly a vacation. He slid down until he was more or less prone. "You want to talk about it? Or you want to sleep? Or what?"

Quentin was quiet for a moment as he forced himself to return to calm. He was overreacting, part of him knew. He was safe, no harm done. Just stop thinking about it, focus on something else, and it'll all go away.

In one quick motion, Quentin rolled on top of Gabriel and kissed him, pinning Gabriel down to the bed. It was several seconds before Quentin slowly pulled away. "I choose 'what.'"

***

 

**Rachel and Haller**

 

Rachel sat up on the floor of the lab she had effectively taken over without permission, groaned, and hauled herself to her feet. Tugging on the jacket she had been using as a pillow, she stumbled out and towards the residences, flying over steps she was sure she did not want to navigate.

“Open up, David,” she called, fists thudding against his door. Her previous knocks had gone unanswered, and patience was not a commodity she stored in abundance. “I _will_ break down your door and make you pay for it."

Her demands were met with silence. Then, just before the point Rachel would have been justified in a little destruction of property, the knob turned.

The face through the gap in the door was blank, but his eyes still skimmed the redhead for assessment. "You made it back," Haller observed. "Good, that means the others probably did, too." Mechanically, he turned to head back into the depths of his room. "I'd better call Charles."

She swiftly circled around him to block his path, door banging shut with the lightest touch of her powers she was capable of. Arms crossed against her chest, Rachel peered up at him with an arched brow. "You're doing it again, David. Or should I say: You're still doing it, David." 

"I'm doing my job." Haller raised his hand, and his cellphone flew off his bedside table and jumped into his palm. Completely ignoring Rachel, he unlocked it and began scrolling through his contacts. The screen light painted his face a sickly blue.

“Does taking care of yourself have to be part of your job before you will do it?” She demanded, resisting the urge to slap the phone of out Haller’s hands when he continued to ignore her. “I’m sorry I let this go on for so long without at least trying to help, and maybe I’m the last person in this place that has the right to lecture you about mental health. But I saw what happened with your powers. How are you going to do your all-important job if you can’t be relied on to use them? What if I wasn’t there? Would you have had Jean burn a hole through the girl’s--?”

Abruptly cutting herself off, Rachel swallowed, carding fingers roughly through messy hair. For a brief moment in time, the façade wavered, long-hidden weariness showing in the curve of her neck and slack shoulders, in plain sight for him to see – If he took enough care to look. With a deep breath, she collected herself and fixed a steely gaze on his phone in lieu of having to bear his dispassionate face. “Are you going to let that hole in your head consume you?”

Something wavered behind Haller's eyes. For just an instant it seemed like the dam would finally crumble. There, in the darkness of the early morning, the space between them teetered on the edge of denial and acceptance.

And then it passed.

The door behind Rachel opened, and the girl was suddenly lifted off her feet and pushed back -- carried by a wave of telekinesis as inexorably as a body being washed out by the tide. It set her down beyond the threshold, and as her feet returned to the floor the door swung closed and locked behind her with a solid, final _click._

The last thing she saw was Haller, turning away.

"Oh, so _now_ your powers work!" Rachel snarled, expression ugly and face flushed a mottled red as she raised a telekinetically charged fist at the door, ready to shatter the offending wood into pieces so that some sense could be throttled into her adopted brother. 

It never connected.

The redhead dropped her arm limply to her side, destruction aborted as the violent rage left her in a rush as rapidly as it had come. Heartache welled up in its place, for both him and for herself. In the end, her own hurt won, too easily convinced that she was no longer wanted. Gathering fatigue and the physical pain in her chest to ward off tears, Rachel left, expression eerily blank. If Haller wanted to drown in himself, she was not going to stick around to watch it happen.

How funny it was that the people you loved and relied on the most could cut you to the quick the easiest and in the most painful ways.

**Author's Note:**

> X-Project is an X-Men Movieverse/MCU RPG on Dreamwidth. It started in 2003, set right after the second X-Men movie, and from there took on a life of its own. Thirteen years later it’s become a universe all its own, and includes characters from all walks of Marvel life – no character is too small or too obscure for X-Project. We roleplay mainly through writing logs on email, as well as posts on Dreamwidth.
> 
> If you're interested, check out the below links!
> 
>   
> [Welcome to X-Project](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Welcome_To_X-Project) | [Application](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application) | [Available Characters](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Unplayed_Characters) | [Game Wiki](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) | [Read The Game](http://xp-friends.dreamwidth.org/read) | [FAQ](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=FAQ) | [Contact Us](mailto:x_moderators@googlegroups.com) | [Follow Us on Twitter!](http://twitter.com/#!/xprojectrpg) | [Rules](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Policy) | [Tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/blog/xprojectrpg) | [Application Checklist](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application_Checklist)  
> 


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